Judge Uses ChatGPT As A Source For Court Verdict

Uploaded on 2024-08-22 in TECHNOLOGY-Key Areas-Artificial Intelligence, FREE TO VIEW, BUSINESS-Services-Law

A lower court judge in Nijmegen in the Netherlands has surprised officials by saying he used ChatGPT to collect information while working on a case.

The judge asked AI chatbot about the average life span of a solar panels and used the answer it generated in the verdict.

This has created much concern amongst legal experts, who say they have doubts about whether this was a responsible thing to do and, unsurprisingly, some AI experts are also questioning whether this was sensible.

The case concerned two home-owners who were in a dispute about solar panels. One had added an extra floor to his home and the second argued this had an impact on the efficiency of his solar panels. “The judge estimates, partly on the basis of ChatGPT, that that the average life span of a solar panel from 2009 to be between 25 and 30 years, so for this case we have put it at 27.5 years,” the ruling states. A spokesman for the court said the judge had only used ChatGPT as one of several sources and the results were not the determining factor.

The CEO of cyber security company ESET, Dave Maasland, commented that AI can be of great use to the legal system as a tool to reduce waiting times, simplify language and to offer cheaper legal help. But it is crucial that its use and answers are checked thoroughly, he said. “We know that generative AI is still in the beginning stages and is not without its own hallucinations,” he said.

A spokesperson for the Gelderland District Court has said that the judge only used ChatGPT as one source of information, amongst others, and that “this data was not the deciding factor in dismissing the case".

The Dutch judge is by no means the first to use ChatGPT in a ruling. British Court of Appeal judge Lord Justice Birss last year used ChatGPT to provide a summary of an area of law, describing the chatbot as “jolly useful.”

Despite this positive reference, a New York lawyer got into trouble in 2023 after using ChatGPT to verify case references, which were subsequently found to be non-existent.

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