In recent years, artificial intelligence has begun to occupy the place of the great contemporary suspect. The story seems simple and almost perfect: a machine answers with confidence, invents citations, fabricates case law, fills gaps with unsettling fluency, and ends up deceiving professionals, courts, and ordinary users alike. The case of Mata v. Avianca, decided on June 22, 2023 by Judge P. Kevin Castel in New York, became the initial emblem of that alarm: lawyers were sanctioned after submitting nonexistent precedents generated by ChatGPT. Soon afterward, other courts began to record similar episodes, culminating in Whiting v. City of Athens, Tennessee, decided by the Sixth Circuit on March 13, 2026, where attorneys were sanctioned for including more than two dozen false citations. Seen this way, the scene appears unequivocal: AI lies, and humans fall.
Adrian Gabriel Muniello (Mon,) studied this question.