Technology

AI Update: Keeping An Eye On Artificial Intelligence

A judge orders disclosure, a radio host sues for defamation, and experts consider the future of dealmaking, in this roundup of recent AI news.

By Ethan Beberness  
on

artificial-intelligence-3382507__340If you’ve joined the wave of attorneys using AI to help create legal documents, be sure you’re aware of who needs to know. On Thursday, a U.S. Court of International Trade judge ordered that attorneys must disclose  “which program was used and the ‘specific portions of text that have been so drafted,’” Reuters reports.

OpenAI LLC, the company behind the massively popular ChatGPT artificial intelligence program, is facing its first lawsuit as a result of an inaccuracy in text generated by the program, according to Bloomberg Law. The plaintiff, radio show host Mark Walters, has filed a complaint in pursuit of defamation charges against OpenAI after a journalist used the program to generate a summary of another lawsuit in Washington federal court that, according to Walters, inaccurately characterized his role in that matter.

Blaming AI for the errors in New York personal-injury lawyer Steven Schwartz’s ChatGPT-generated court filing “makes no more sense than blaming the printing press for mistakes in a typed one,” The Economist claims, going on to argue that attorneys should understand AI for what it really is: “neither a fad nor an apocalypse, but a tool in its infancy—and one that could radically change how lawyers work and law firms make money.”

Are AI-generated contracts the future of commercial dealmaking? Not without continued involvement and review from human attorneys, the Financial Times writes. FT’s coverage highlights legal tech company Ironclad’s AI Assist program as an example of how this might work, with users “train[ing] Ironclad software using their own agreements and clauses, teaching it how to highlight irregularities.”

Much has been written about how AI will impact the security of creative intellectual property, but what about IP that’s potentially even more sensitive — like your firm’s business secrets? “The mere disclosure of a business secret to a generative AI program may, absent proper protections, undermine or even cancel out efforts to safeguard that information legally as a trade secret,” Joshua Weigensberg and Kate Garber of Pryor Cashman write for Legaltech News.

Ethan Beberness is a Brooklyn-based writer covering legal tech, small law firms, and in-house counsel for Above the Law. His coverage of legal happenings and the legal services industry has appeared in Law360, Bushwick Daily, and elsewhere.

Sponsored

CRM Banner

Topics

,