The Supreme Court recently flagged the growing menace of litigants and lawyers citing Artificial Intelligence-generated, non-existent judgments in their petitions/ arguments. It observed the menace is rampant, not just in India.
A Bench of Justices Rajesh Bindal and Vijay Bishnoi observed that such practice is becoming increasingly rampant across courts in India and worldwide and cautioned that “everyone needs to be careful” while relying on such material.
The Court was hearing a plea by the Director of a company seeking deletion of observations made by the Bombay High Court regarding the citation of a non-existent judgment.The paragraph sought to be expunged contained adverse observations by the High Court regarding the petitioner’s written submissions.The High Court observed that the submissions appeared to have been generated using an AI tool and further noted that they referred to a non-existent judgment.This led to the appeal before the Supreme Court.
During the hearing, the petitioner told the top court that he had never cited the said judgment.“Though he tried to explain that he never cited that judgment, however, at present we are not going into that issue,” the Supreme Court said.However, the apex court proceeded to expunge the High Court's remarks.
“As a matter of indulgence, we expunge the remarks made in the aforesaid paragraph. However, the fact remains that this menace is rampant in all courts now, not only in India but throughout the world. Everyone needs to be careful about this. In fact, this Court is already seized of this matter on the judicial side,” the top court observed.
Justice MM Sathaye imposed Rs. 50,000 as cost on the appellant and directed him to pay it to the High Court Employees Medical Fund.
Although the Supreme Court allowed the remarks to be expunged, it noted with caution: "Though, he tried to explain that he never cited that judgment, however, at the present we are not going into that issue. As a matter of indulgence, we expunge the remarks made in the aforesaid paragraph. However, the fact remains that this menace is rampant in all Courts now, not only in India rather throughout the world. Everyone needs to be careful about this. In fact, this Court is already seized of this matter on judicial side."
The petitioner appeared in person.Senior Advocate Madhavi Divan with advocates Pranav Sarthi, Janay Jain, Rishabh Jadhav, and Sameer appeared for the respondent.It may be noted that another bench of the Supreme Court has taken cognizance of the issue after a trial court's judgment cited AI-generated fake citations.With the aforesaid observations, it disposed of the SLP.Many of the Supreme Court judges have time and again flagged the use of AI tools in drafting legal proceedings containing fake citations and quotes.
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