SAN DIEGO (KGTV) — AI is quickly becoming a tool many rely on in daily life.
“I use it at least a few times a week now," San Diego resident Jessica McKee says. “I home school one of my children, and you can ask it to do lesson plans, and you can have it tailored specifically to that child's needs.”
Although the tool may not make mistakes every time, reality is that it does make mistakes.
"It gives erroneous information so you can kind of correct it, and I guess, lead it down the path of correcting itself," McKee says.
And those mistakes aren’t rare. The New York Times found advanced AI tools make errors up to 79 percent of the time. Tech companies call them “hallucinations.”
In California, one attorney learned that lesson the hard way. A state appeals court fined him $10,000 after ChatGPT generated 21 out of 23 fake legal quotes in his filing.
The growing use of AI is raising questions in the legal community.
“This is the first reported appellate opinion, but it's not the first time it's happened," professor at the University of San Diego School of Law, David McGowan says.
He adds that many people are using AI without understanding the potential risks. And for attorneys, the cost of not double-checking could be high.
“You can't say things to judges that aren't true," McGowan says. "Judges have discretion to sanction lawyers, which is basically fine them money.”
McGowan also worries about people starting to skip lawyers altogether and using free AI tools to draft their own legal documents.
“If your document contains a case that's made up and just doesn't exist, that's something that should be caught," McGowan says. "Lawyers know how to do that. I don't know that ordinary people do.”
Still, he does think the tool can be beneficial to attorneys and clients, if used correctly.
“If you could use an AI tool to produce something that was accurate and reliable in half the time it took a lawyer to do it on their own, that's good for the lawyer because they have more time to do other matters," McGowan says. "It's also good for the client because they pay less.”
ABC 10 News reached out to the attorney fined by the appeals court for comment, but did not receive a response.
