UK Court Warns Lawyers of ‘Severe’ Penalties for Fake AI-Generated Citations

The High Court of England and Wales has issued a stern warning to lawyers, emphasizing the need for heightened scrutiny in the use of artificial intelligence in legal practice. The court stated that lawyers could face ‘severe’ penalties for submitting fake AI-generated citations.

In a recent ruling, Judge Victoria Sharp addressed two interconnected cases, highlighting the unreliability of generative AI tools like ChatGPT for legal research. She emphasized that these tools, while capable of producing coherent and plausible responses, may generate outputs that are factually incorrect and misleading.

Judge Sharp explained, “Such tools can produce apparently coherent and plausible responses to prompts, but those coherent and plausible responses may turn out to be entirely incorrect. The responses may make confident assertions that are simply untrue.”

While not outright prohibiting the use of AI in legal research, the court underscored the professional duty of lawyers to verify the accuracy of AI-generated information using authoritative sources before incorporating it into their work. This directive comes in response to a growing number of instances where lawyers have cited AI-generated falsehoods, including cases involving lawyers representing major AI platforms.

The ruling stresses the need for stricter adherence to guidelines and compliance with lawyers’ duties to the court. Judge Sharp indicated that the ruling would be disseminated to professional bodies, including the Bar Council and the Law Society, to reinforce these standards.

One of the cases examined involved a lawyer who submitted a filing containing 45 citations, 18 of which were non-existent. Furthermore, many of the remaining citations either lacked the attributed quotations, did not support the stated propositions, or were irrelevant to the case’s subject matter.

In a separate case, a lawyer representing a client facing eviction cited five non-existent cases in a court filing. Although the lawyer denied using AI directly, they suggested that the citations might have originated from AI-generated summaries found on platforms like Google or Safari. The court, while refraining from initiating contempt proceedings in this instance, clarified that this decision should not be regarded as a precedent.

Judge Sharp warned, “Lawyers who do not comply with their professional obligations in this respect risk severe sanction.”

Both lawyers involved in the aforementioned cases have been referred to professional regulators. The court’s potential sanctions for lawyers failing to meet their duties range from public admonishment to the imposition of costs, contempt proceedings, and even referral to the police.