New Delhi: The Supreme Court has issued a strong warning to lawyers, saying that presenting judgments generated through artificial intelligence (AI) that were never actually delivered by any court is not only wrong but also a blatant breach of professional conduct.
The issue arose from a property dispute case in an Andhra Pradesh trial court, where the final order delivered in August last year relied on certain “previous judgments” cited by counsel. It later emerged that those cited judgments did not exist in any court records and were allegedly created using AI and submitted in the proceedings.
An appeal was filed before the Andhra Pradesh High Court against the trial court’s decision. However, the High Court upheld the trial court’s order without taking note that the cited judgments were AI-generated fabrications, prompting the petitioner to approach the Supreme Court.
Hearing the matter, a bench of Justices P.S. Narasimha and Alok Aradhe said it was taking serious note of a trial court deciding a case based on fake, AI-generated judgments. The bench said it could not accept lawyers creating such judgments and placing them before courts, and indicated it wanted to examine the issue in depth.
The Supreme Court issued notices seeking responses from Attorney General R. Venkataramani, Solicitor General Tushar Mehta and the Bar Council of India, and appointed senior advocate Shyam Divan to assist the court. The court also referred to a similar hearing last month where concerns were raised about lawyers using AI to file petitions and cite non-existent judgments.
