UK Crown Prosecution Service lawyers were left red-faced after it emerged that two entirely fake cases had been cited in written submissions to the High Court during an extradition appeal.
It’s the latest in a growing list of incidents where artificial intelligence has generated “hallucinated” fictitious citations in formal legal documents. The errors surfaced ahead of a hearing involving two orders, both of which were ultimately rejected, and “therefore had no impact on the argument or the court’s judgment,” said Mr Justice Sweeting.
The judge noted that the prosecution accepted responsibility, stating that “while the immediate source of the error may have been the use of generative artificial intelligence, the operative cause was human error in the failure to verify the authorities relied upon in formal submissions placed before the court.”
Mr Justice Sweeting also recorded that the CPS had stressed this was “not a deliberate attempt to mislead, but rather an isolated incident arising from inadequate checking of written work.”
