Colorado Lawyer Filed a Motion Citing Hallucinated ChatGPT Cases

June 13, 2023

A Colorado Springs attorney, Zachariah Crabill, inadvertently used ChatGPT-generated, false legal cases in court documents. The AI-induced error led to the denial of a motion and potential legal consequences for Crabill. This incident underscores the significance of employing safe and secure AI practices in the realm of legal research. It also serves as a reminder about the importance of Project Cerebellum, an initiative focused on responsible AI governance and harm prevention. To learn more about how you can contribute to the HISPI Project Cerebellum TAIM (Govern, Map, Measure, or Manage), JOIN US.

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Matched TAIM controls

Suggested mapping from embedding similarity (not a formal assessment). Browse all TAIM controls

MAP 4.1 — similarity 0.646, rank 1. TAIM detail and related incidents →
MAP 1.6 — similarity 0.625, rank 2. TAIM detail and related incidents →
GOVERN 6.1 — similarity 0.619, rank 3. TAIM detail and related incidents →

Alleged deployer: zachariah-crabill
Alleged developer: openai, chatgpt
Alleged harmed parties: zachariah-crabill's-client, zachariah-crabill, legal-system

Source

Data from the AI Incident Database (AIID). Cite this incident: https://incidentdatabase.ai/cite/615

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.