Charleston, South Carolina – Steinberg Law Firm attorney Adam Greene recently joined FOX 24 News Now host, Leyla Gulen, to discuss the use of artificial intelligence in the legal profession.

Artificial intelligence has become more popular in nearly every field, and law is no exception. From character recognition software used in scanning documents to tools like ChatGPT, AI is everywhere一and it can have significant effects on the quality and ethics of legal work.

For example, Mr. Greene cited a case in New York in which an attorney relied on ChatGPT to draft a legal motion, complete with citations to legal cases. Although the attorney received confirmation from the software that the cases existed, the court discovered upon reading the filing that the cases were, in fact, fake一invented by the software, which remixes existing written documents to create something that mimics but does not replace the original.

The attorney received a reprimand for the ChatGPT filing. However, most lawyers are unlikely to face disbarment for a single mistake like this, says Mr. Greene.

Nonetheless, “…there’s also ethical considerations there, too, because you’re passing off the work as your own,” notes Mr. Greene.

These ethical considerations extend beyond the legal sphere. Students who use ChatGPT to write school essays, for instance, commit plagiarism when they pass off the work as their own without citing their sources. As the New York case demonstrates, even asking ChatGPT to include citations may not be enough. The software is capable of generating citations to sources that do not exist.

Yet as the software develops, it may become better at mimicking legal briefs, research essays, and other forms of written work. As AI use becomes more common, “…it’s going to be very difficult to differentiate between what was human-created versus what was computer-generated,” predicts Mr. Greene.

While ChatGPT provides an interesting case study in artificial intelligence, it is no substitute for experience and human ability. For now, experienced attorneys will continue to represent clients using their own knowledge, skill, and management of the work done by their teams.