section_path: Applications/Law
section_name: Law
paragraph_text: Law
  
  In January 2023, Massachusetts State Senator Barry Finegold and State Representative Josh S. Cutler proposed a bill partially written by ChatGPT, "An Act drafted with the help of ChatGPT to regulate generative artificial intelligence models like ChatGPT", which would require companies to disclose their algorithms and data collection practices to the office of the State Attorney General, arrange regular risk assessments, and contribute to the prevention of plagiarism. The bill was subsequently removed from the docket without coming to vote.
  
  On April 11, 2023, a session court judge in Pakistan used ChatGPT to decide the bail of a 13-year-old accused in a matter. The court quoted the use of ChatGPT assistance in its verdict:
  
  Can a juvenile suspect in Pakistan, who is 13 years old, be granted bail after arrest?
  
  The AI language model replied:
  
  Under the Juvenile Justice System Act 2018, according to section 12, the court can grant bail on certain conditions. However, it is up to the court to decide whether or not a 13-year-old suspect will be granted bail after arrest.
  
  The judge asked ChatGPT other questions about the case and formulated his final decision in light of its answers.
  
  In Mata v. Avianca, Inc., 22-cv-1461 (PKC), a personal injury lawsuit against Avianca Airlines filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York in May 2023 (with Senior Judge P. Kevin Castel presiding), the plaintiff's attorneys used ChatGPT to generate a legal motion. ChatGPT generated numerous fictitious legal cases involving fictitious airlines with fabricated quotations and internal citations in the legal motion. Castel noted numerous inconsistencies in the opinion summaries, and called one of the cases' legal analysis "gibberish". The plaintiff's attorneys faced potential judicial sanction and disbarment for filing the motion and presenting the fictitious legal decisions ChatGPT generated as authentic. The case was dismissed and the attorneys were fined $5,000 as a sanction. In July 2024, the American Bar Association issued its first formal ethics opinion on attorneys using generative AI.
  
  In October 2023, the council of Porto Alegre, Brazil, unanimously approved a local ordinance proposed by councilman Ramiro Rosário that would exempt residents from needing to pay for the replacement of stolen water consumption meters; the bill went into effect on November 23. On November 29, Rosário revealed that the bill had been entirely written by ChatGPT, and that he had presented it to the rest of the council without making any changes or disclosing the chatbot's involvement. The city's council president, Hamilton Sossmeier, initially criticized Rosário's initiative, saying it could represent "a dangerous precedent", but later said he "changed his mind": "unfortunately or fortunately, this is going to be a trend."
  
  In December 2023, a self-representing litigant in a tax case before the First-tier Tribunal in the United Kingdom cited a series of hallucinated cases purporting to support her argument that she had a reasonable excuse for not paying capital gains tax owed on the sale of property. The judge warned that the submission of nonexistent legal authorities meant that both the Tribunal and HM Revenue and Customs had "to waste time and public money", which "reduces the resources available to progress the cases of other court users who are waiting for their appeals to be determined".
  
  Judge Kevin Newsom of the US court of appeals of the 11th circuit endorsed the use of ChatGPT and noted that he himself uses the software to help decide rulings on contract interpretation issues.