A judge has slammed a plaintiff for introducing his 'attorney' in an extremely bold move that saw his representative speak for a matter of seconds before being silenced.
Sitting in a New York State Supreme Court Appellate Division courtroom without a legal team on March 26, 74-year-old Jerome Dewald called on a pre-recorded video to introduce what was his own version of a lawyer.
A panel of five judges, whose job it was to determine whether Dewald had a case in an employment dispute, with the plaintiff appealing against a prior decision, allowed him to proceed.
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“It may please the court, I come here today a humble [inaudible] before a panel of five distinguished justices," the 'person' in the video can be heard saying.
Immediately, Justice Sallie Manzanet-Daniels raised her concerns asking whether 'that' was 'counsel for the case'.
Dewald replied: "I generated that."
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Court proceedings were brought to an immediate halt, with Manzanet-Daniels yelling at the clerk: "Shut that off!"
Although not before lecturing Dewald, she fumed: "It would have been nice to know that when you made your application. I don’t appreciate being misled."
Yes, Dewald actually attempted to use artificial intelligence (AI) in the courtroom to represent his case.
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Speaking with the Associated Press, he explained that he had applied to the court for permission to play the video, and contacted a tech company from San Francisco to see whether they could create an avatar for him.
The original plan was to have one look like him, but with the court case fast approaching, he opted for a generative avatar.
“The court was really upset about it,” Dewald told the outlet. "They chewed me up pretty good."
It isn't the first time AI has been used in court.
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Just last year, again in New York, two lawyers were fined $5,000 each after they called on ChatGPT to carry out legal research, which provided them a fictitious case - which they in turn submitted to the court.
While a former attorney for President Donald Trump, Michael Cohen apologized after lawyers for his firm cited fake rulings in legal papers, with Cohen claiming he did not know that the AI tool his company was using was capable of 'hallucinations'.
It was only a matter of time before someone called on AI to represent them in court.
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Whether we like it or not, AI has advanced and become part of our daily lives, in ways most people are not aware of.
The average person uses AI technology from the moment they switch on their device: through face ID, search engines like Google, online banking, and so on – while digital voice assistants, like Siri and Alexa, use microphones to listen to ‘wake words’ meaning they are always listening.
Topics: Artificial Intelligence, Court, New York, Technology
Joe Yates