Justice Department Attorney Resigns After Submitting Court Filings With Fake AI-Generated Quotes

United States attorneys in a North Carolina district are being warned against using artificial intelligence to write briefs after a Department of Justice lawyer was removed from a case for filing a legal brief with fake quotations and legal citations. The plaintiff in a case regarding veterans’ health care benefits objected to a filing signed by an assistant United States attorney, Rudy E. Renfer, claiming it contained “fabricated quotations and misstated the holdings of several cases.”The judge directed Mr. Renfer to respond to the accusations. In that reply, Mr. Renfer said he had “inadvertently included incorrect citations to case law” and blamed the errors on the “inadvertent filing of an unfinalized draft document.” Mr. Renfer asked the judge to strike the disputed quotations and misstatements or to accept what he described as the finalized version of the brief.“Having reviewed the filings in this matter and other submissions by Renfer, the court has serious concerns about the accuracy of certain quotations and representations in Renfer’s filings, and the explanation offered for their inclusion,” Magistrate Judge Robert T. Numbers, II, stated in a written response.The judge ordered Mr. Renfer to appear before him to justify why he should not be sanctioned with fines and a referral to the state bar for a possible suspension of his law license. During that hearing on Tuesday, Mr. Renfer told the judge he had accidentally deleted his original brief and then used AI to try to replicate his work. He said he was resigning from his role as a United States attorney.The lead attorney in the Eastern District of North Carolina, Ellis Boyle, also testified at the hearing. Mr. Boyle apologized to the judge on behalf of the office. He also told the judge that he had written a memo to his staff warning about the use of AI.“AI may hallucinate, but that does not excuse you from your obligations,” Mr. Boyle wrote in the document obtained by WRAL-TV. “Always personally verify each quote or proposition with your eyes in an actual case or law or other valid source.”“We cannot misquote or make up any quotes or inaccurately pinpoint cite quotes to a case or make up a fake case,” Mr. Boyle’s memo continued. “This is federal Big Boy court. Act out of fear, or respect, or reverence, or some combination thereof, accordingly.”There are a growing number of cases in which lawyers have been disciplined for filing documents with AI-related errors.Last month, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ordered an attorney to pay $2,500 in sanctions for submitting a brief containing more than 20 AI-generated case citations that turned out to be fake.Last year, a federal judge in Colorado ordered the two lawyers for MyPillow founder Mike Lindell to pay $3,000 each after they submitted an error-filled AI-generated court filing during a defamation case that Mr. Lindell lost.A lawyer for President Trump’s onetime personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, made a 2023 filing at a Manhattan federal court that was filled with AI “hallucinations.” Mr. Cohen took responsibility, stating that he had passed along to his attorney bogus artificial intelligence-generated legal case citations that he got online by doing research through Google Bard. He said he was unaware that the service could generate nonexistent cases.The first high-profile incident of AI-fabricated case citations in the federal courts occurred in the Southern District of New York earlier that same year. Two attorneys blamed ChatGPT for “tricking them” into including fictitious legal research in a filing.

Justice Department Attorney Resigns After Submitting Court Filings With Fake AI-Generated Quotes

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