Google Bard Allegedly Generated Fake Legal Citations in Michael Cohen Case
December 12, 2023
Michael Cohen, former lawyer for Donald Trump, claims to have used Google Bard, an AI chatbot, to generate legal case citations. These false citations were unknowingly included in a court motion by Cohen's attorney, David M. Schwartz. The AI's misuse highlights emerging risks in legal technology, as AI-generated content increasingly infiltrates professional domains.
- Alleged deployer
- michael-cohen, david-m.-schwartz
- Alleged developer
- google-bard, google
- Alleged harmed parties
- michael-cohen, david-m.-schwartz
Source
Data from the AI Incident Database (AIID). Cite this incident: https://incidentdatabase.ai/cite/623
Data source
Incident data is from the AI Incident Database (AIID).
When citing the database as a whole, please use:
McGregor, S. (2021) Preventing Repeated Real World AI Failures by Cataloging Incidents: The AI Incident Database. In Proceedings of the Thirty-Third Annual Conference on Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence (IAAI-21). Virtual Conference.
Pre-print on arXiv · Database snapshots & citation guide
We use weekly snapshots of the AIID for stable reference. For the official suggested citation of a specific incident, use the “Cite this incident” link on each incident page.