New Mexico court fines lawyer for ChatGPT-generated brief with fabricated witnesses

New Mexico's Supreme Court fined a defense lawyer and held him in contempt for filing a murder-appeal brief containing police testimony and witnesses fabricated by OpenAI's ChatGPT.

• The New Mexico Supreme Court fined Santa Fe attorney Stephen Aarons $5,000, held him in contempt, and referred him to a state attorney disciplinary board.
• The court said the filing contained "false testimony from wholly fabricated witnesses," including fictional statements about the shooter's dark pants and white shirt.
• Aarons said he used ChatGPT to summarize trial proceedings in the appeal of Oscar Renee Sandoval and did not understand the degree to which AI could "hallucinate" facts.
• Justice C. Shannon Bacon pressed Aarons at an August 21 hearing on his awareness of widely publicized AI "hallucination" errors in court filings.