Michael Cohen acknowledged believing that Google Bard, an AI chatbot, was a more accurate “supercharged search engine” than other generative AI offerings.
Former Donald Trump attorney Michael Cohen acknowledged that he sent his counsel the wrong case citations produced by Google Bard, an AI chatbot.
Michael Cohen, who is scheduled to testify against Trump in his future criminal prosecutions, acknowledged in a recent court filing that he had sent his attorney, David Schwartz, legal citations produced by Google Bard to bolster his case.
“Google Bard produced the invalid citations at issue—along with numerous others that Mr. Cohen discovered but did not include in the motion—which Mr. Cohen mistakenly believed to be a generative AI service like Chat-GPT, but rather a supercharged search engine.”
It was countered, though, that Cohen is not a practicing attorney and was merely providing his lawyer with the material; as such, it ought to have been examined before being entered into formal court records.
It was reported in statement that , “Mr. Cohen is not a practicing attorney and has no concept of the risks of using AI services for legal research, nor does he have an ethical obligation to verify the accuracy of his research,” underscoring the need for more investigation.
“To summarize: Mr. Cohen provided Mr. Schwartz with citations (and case summaries) he had found online and believed to be real. Mr. Schwartz added them to the motion but failed to check those citations or summaries.”
This isn’t the first time an attorney has been exposed for using AI and discovering later that the technology produced false results.
Steven Schwartz, a lawyer at Levidow, Levidow & Oberman in New York, was reportedly under fire earlier this year for allegedly employing artificial intelligence (AI) to create what turned out to be fictitious court citations. The judge harshly criticised Schwartz for the errors, even though he claimed it was his first time utilising ChatGPT for legal research:
The judge declared, “Six of the submitted cases appear to be bogus judicial decisions with bogus quotes and bogus internal citations.”