Brian Sims
Editor
Brian Sims
Editor
ACCORDING TO a report in The Daily Telegraph on 12 December, Judges will be allowed to use ChatGPT to help write legal rulings despite warnings that Artificial Intelligence (AI) can ‘invent’ cases that never happened. It emerges that The Judicial Office has issued official guidance to thousands of Judges in England and Wales suggesting that AI can be useful for summarising large amounts of text or in administrative tasks.
However, The Judicial Office has also stated that chatbots are a “poor way of conducting research” and prone to making up fictitious cases or legal texts.
Further, the guidance warns that the rise of bots such as ChatGPT could mean they end up being widely used by members of the public when bringing legal cases, with potential for deepfake technology to be used to create fake evidence.
Significant opportunities
Sir Geoffrey Vos, the Master of the Rolls, has noted that AI “offers significant opportunities in developing a better, quicker and more cost-effective” digital justice system. Vos commented: “Technology will only move forwards. The judiciary has to understand what’s going on. Judges, like everybody else, need to be acutely aware that AI can yield inaccurate responses as well as accurate ones.”
Earlier this year, a senior Judge, namely Lord Justice Birss, described ChatGPT as “jolly useful”, explaining that he had used the chatbot to summarise an area of law he was familiar with. He then copied and pasted it into a court ruling.
Lord Justice Birss had used ChatGPT as a ‘test’. It had been used within the guidance because he had not entered any secret or confidential information.
Sir Geoffrey Vos feels that lawyers would potentially be subject to perjury and criminal sanctions if submissions penned by a chatbot produced false evidence. “Nothing changes just because they may have derived what they said falsely from an AI chatbot instead of out of their own head,” summarised Vos.
Major cyber risks
Suid Adeyanju, CEO of cyber company RiverSafe, commented: “The rise of AI use in legal rulings brings with it great opportunities, but also opens the door to major cyber risks. Hackers have already proven adept at infiltrating and exploiting security loopholes to steal data. This scenario could also lead to widespread evidence tampering. It’s vital that organisations using this technology tread very carefully and ensure they have the necessary security systems in place to keep cyber criminals locked out.”
Josh Boer, director at tech consultancy VeUP, added: “This is the latest example of AI reshaping critical functions, duly saving time and money by managing administrative tasks. The technology has huge potential to ‘turbocharge’ the next generation of UK SMEs, providing crucial support in the back office.”
However, Boer explained: “Far too many companies lack the skills and support to embrace AI. That’s why it’s crucial that organisations come to terms with and understand the capabilities of the latest generative AI by embracing key platforms to boost growth through the cloud for the long-term.”
