Kamal Ghorui
NEW DELHI: As heads of govts and tech giants brainstorm how to reap benefits of the artificial intelligence revolution and dodge the risks that it poses, Supreme Court has expressed alarm over the growing practice of advocates using AI tools to draft petitions, and in the process, quoting from fictional judgments.CJI Surya Kant said, “We are alarmed to learn that lawyers are using AI to draft petitions. It is very unfortunate that the petitions quote non-existent paragraphs from judgments,” Justice B V Nagarathna said, “A non-existent judgment Mercy vs Mankind was cited.”AI-provided fake quotes have made our job tougher: CJI CJI Kant said there are several instances of such non-existent judgments having been cited in petitions, which were detected by Justice Dipankar Datta, echoing the concern in the US and other countries over the “hallucination” by large learning models. “There are instances where the petition quotes several paragraphs from a judgment of SC. But on scrutiny it was found that these paragraphs do not exist in the judgment,” Justice Nagarathna said. CJI Kant said, “It makes the judges’ task more difficult. Now, they must not only go through the pleadings, but also scrutinise the authenticity of every paragraph quoted from cited judgments.” Recently, Bombay high court imposed a cost of Rs 50,000 on Heart and Soul Entertainment Ltd for submitting AI-generated arguments citing a non-existent case. HC said, “A strong pointer is seen from a reference made to one alleged caselaw ‘Jyoti w/o Dinesh Tulsiani Vs. Elegant Associates’. Neither citation is given nor a copy of judgment is supplied by the Respondent. This court and its law clerks were at pains to find out this case law but could not find it.“ “This has resulted in the waste of precious judicial time. If an AI tool is used in aid of research, it is welcome; however, there is great responsibility upon the party, even an advocate using such tools, to cross verify the references and make sure that the material generated by the machine/computer is relevant, genuine and in existence,” HC said. Last Sept, Delhi high court had found a petitioner indulging in “AI hallucination” as it relied on paragraphs from two judgements, one which does not exist and in another the quoted paragraphs did not exist. Last month, Andhra Pradesh HC had refused to quash an order of a trial court judge who had passed an order relying on AI-prompted non-existent ruling. HC said though the citation was wrong, the legal principles applied by the trial judge were correct and in consonance with settled law. In March last year, Karnataka HC had taken adverse note of a city civil judge relying on non-existent SC judgments to pass an order and had said that this would require further inquiry. The bench of CJI Kant and Justices Nagarathna and Joymalya BagchiTuesday also recalled how crisp petitions used to be drafted by senior advocate and former law minister A K Sen.
