HISPI Project Cerebellum HISPI PROJECT CEREBELLUM

Nippon Life Alleged ChatGPT Practiced Law Without a License in Illinois Disability Case

March 4, 2026

Nippon Life filed a lawsuit against OpenAI in Chicago, accusing their AI model, ChatGPT, of practicing law without a license. The complaint alleges that ChatGPT assisted a former disability claimant in reopening a settled case and generating numerous frivolous filings, leading to legal expense and abuse-of-process harms. OpenAI has denied the accusations. This incident highlights the need for responsible AI governance, particularly when it comes to guardrails for AI that may interact with legal systems. It also underscores the importance of Project Cerebellum's AI incident database in harm prevention and promoting safe and secure AI practices.

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Matched TAIM controls

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

Alleged deployer
openai
Alleged developer
openai
Alleged harmed parties
nippon-life-insurance-company-of-america, litigants-in-nippon-life-disability-litigation, graciela-dela-torre

Source

Data from the AI Incident Database (AIID). Cite this incident: https://incidentdatabase.ai/cite/1415

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.