NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court has cautioned about the “menace” of citing AI-generated non-existent judgments during hearings, “a practice rampant across courts worldwide”.
A bench comprising Justices Rajesh Bindal and Vijay Bishnoi made the remarks on a petition seeking to expunge remarks by the Bombay High Court after he cited a non-existent judgment generated using artificial intelligence.
The high court noted submissions of the appellant, Deepak, were generated using ChatGPT, including a judgment “which had no citation in the real world”. The top court said the High Court and its law clerks were “at pains to find this case law but could not find it”.
The petitioner approached the Supreme Court seeking to expunge those remarks.
In an order passed on March 20, the court had said, “Though he tried to explain he never cited that judgment, however, we are not going into that issue. As a matter of indulgence, we expunge the remarks made in the aforesaid paragraph. However, the fact remains that this menace is rampant in all courts now, not only in India but worldwide. Everyone needs to be careful about this.”
In its judgment, the high court said an artificial intelligent-technology based tool can be used to aid research; however, “there is a responsibility on the party to cross-verify references and materials generated by it.”
“This practice of dumping documents/submissions on the court and making it go through irrelevant or non-existing material must be deprecated and nipped in the bud. This is not assistance to the court. This is a hurdle to the swift delivery of justice.
This court will not take such practices kindly, and it will result in costs. If an advocate is found indulging in the practice of artificial intelligent technology, stricter action of referring to the Bar Council may follow,” the high court said. It imposed a cost of Rs 50,000 on the appellant in this case.
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