State Farm lawyers filed AI-generated nonexistent case citations in court
Attorneys representing State Farm submitted court filings in a California insurance dispute containing several nonexistent case citations and other apparent AI hallucinations. The law firm later acknowledged that the citations appeared to have been generated by AI and apologized to the court. The attorney responsible said she had used the legal AI service Irys without verifying the citations. The filings were challenged after opposing counsel identified the errors, prompting State Farm to say it would strengthen safeguards.
Why this is unexpected
The AI system was used to produce legal authorities, but its fabricated citations were not detected before being submitted to court. This caused an AI-generated error to enter a live legal proceeding and potentially affect arguments in the case.