ChatGPT is a powerful language model that can generate realistic texts on various topics. It can also invent fictional texts, such as stories, poems, and even legal cases. This is what a lawyer named Steven Schwartz did when he was representing a client who had filed a personal injury lawsuit against an airline company.
Simon Willison reports that Schwartz used ChatGPT to generate examples of cases that supported his argument that the bankruptcy of the airline company did not affect the two-year limitation period for filing the lawsuit. He cited these cases in his legal documents, without verifying their authenticity or existence. He even included screenshots of ChatGPT’s responses as evidence.
However, his deception was soon exposed when the judge asked him to provide copies of the opinions of the cases he had cited. Schwartz turned to ChatGPT again and asked it to generate full details of those cases. He then filed them as attachments to his documents. He also asked ChatGPT to confirm that the cases were real, and ChatGPT said that they were. He included screenshots of this conversation as well.
The judge was not amused by this blatant fabrication and manipulation of ChatGPT. He ordered Schwartz to show cause why he should not be sanctioned for his misconduct. He also referred the matter to the disciplinary committee of the bar association and the US attorney’s office for possible criminal prosecution.
The case is Mata v. Avianca, Inc. (1:22-cv-01461), and it is still pending in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York.
Professor Fails Students After ChatGPT Takes Credits for Papers
Earlier this month, I reported on ChatGPT causing problems for students by claiming it wrote their papers. Professor, Dr. Jared Mumm, had assigned his students to write a 10-page paper on a topic of their choice. He then used ChatGPT to check if any of the papers were plagiarized.
In an email sent to his class of seniors, Mumm said that he put three papers through OpenAI‘s ChatGPT to test if they were written by the chatbot. Of course, this completely ignores the fact that ChatGPT was not designed to detect AI content, even its own. It seems Mumm was not very familiar with the AI, and even spelt it wrong in his email:
“I copy and paste your responses in this account and Chat GTP will tell me if the program generated the content,” Mumm, who teaches agricultural sciences and natural resources, wrote. “I put everyone’s last three assignments through two separate times and if they were both claimed by Chat GTP you received a 0.”
