Michael Cohen Used AI To Feed Lawyer Bogus Cases

Michael D. Cohen, the onetime fixer for former President Donald J. Trump, said in newly unsealed court papers that he had mistakenly given his lawyer bogus legal citations after the AI program Google Bard cooked them up for him. From a report: The fictitious citations were then used in a motion provided to a Manhattan federal judge. Mr. Cohen, who pleaded guilty in 2018 to campaign finance violations and served time in prison, had asked for an early end to court supervision of his case now that he was out of prison and had complied with the conditions of his release. In a sworn declaration made public on Friday, Mr. Cohen explained that he had not kept up with "emerging trends (and related risks) in legal technology and did not realize that Google Bard was a generative text service that, like ChatGPT, could show citations and descriptions that looked real but actually were not."

He also said he did not realize that the lawyer filing the motion on his behalf, David M. Schwartz, "would drop the cases into his submission wholesale without even confirming that they existed." The revelation could have serious implications for the Manhattan criminal case against Mr. Trump, in which Mr. Cohen is expected to serve as the star witness. The former president's lawyers have long attacked Mr. Cohen as a serial fabulist; now, they will have a brand-new example.

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