The Volokh Conspiracy

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AI in Court

Oklahoma Judge's Ruling Contained AI Hallucinations

|The Volokh Conspiracy |


From Reuters (Mike Scarcella) last week, linked to yesterday by David Lat (Original Jurisdiction):

The judge, Lawrence Wheeler of the District Court of Stephens ‌County, told an investigator with the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation that he used OpenAI's ChatGPT for research, and that an order he drafted contained two citations to cases that do not exist, according to an August 17 letter from a prosecutor to ​the state attorney general's office….

According to the August 17 letter, Hicks recused himself from investigating Wheeler and asked Oklahoma State Attorney ​General Gentner Drummond to review the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation's report or ​reassign the inquiry.

Drummond's ⁠office in its statement on Wednesday said its criminal division "thoroughly reviewed" the claims and was not pursuing them further.

The initial report came in The Oklahoman (Nolan Clay); it's paywalled, but here's a brief excerpt:

The OSBI also looked into allegations "that Judge Wheeler offered to amend the order in exchange for a dismissal of a writ seeking relief from the Oklahoma Supreme Court" and that he "eavesdropped on jury deliberations," the DA [Jason Hicks] disclosed in the letter.

Eugene Volokh is the Thomas M. Siebel Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford, and the Gary T. Schwartz Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus and Distinguished Research Professor at UCLA School of Law. Naturally, his posts here (like the opinions of the other bloggers) are his own, and not endorsed by any institution. He is also the co-host of the Free Speech Unmuted podcast.