English court warned lawyers about sanctions for fake AI citations

The High Court of England and Wales issued a crucial warning — lawyers may face serious sanctions for using fake citations generated by artificial intelligence.

In a landmark decision, Judge Victoria Sharp emphasized that generative artificial intelligence tools like ChatGPT, I quote “are not capable of conducting reliable legal research”. She noted that such tools can create externally coherent and plausible answers that upon examination turn out to be completely incorrect, making confident statements that don’t correspond to reality.

In one of the examined cases, a lawyer presented a document with 45 citations, of which 18 referred to non-existent cases. In another case, a lawyer cited 5 non-existent court decisions. Although the court decided not to initiate contempt of court proceedings, Judge Sharp warned that this “is not a precedent”.

This decision has been transmitted to professional bodies, including the Bar Council and Law Society, to strengthen control over compliance with lawyers’ professional obligations to the court in the era of artificial intelligence.