Asked to summarise a computer-generated transcript of a murder trial and the other documents in the case record, ChatGPT returned a 'bulletproof summary' of the proceedings that named four witnesses who never testified - Officer Michelle Amarillo, Officer Sanchez, Manal Al-Jibury and Teresa Marquez - and supplied their testimony. It also wrote false testimony for witnesses who did appear: that Danny Stanton received threats from the defendant which he took seriously, that Linda Stanton described threats her husband received, and that Mariah Chavez and the fabricated Teresa Marquez described the shooter's clothing and appearance. It cited State v. Lopez, 2005-NMSC-018 and State v. Manus, 1979-NMSC-035 for propositions they do not support. Nothing in the output marked which passages came from the transcript and which were invented.
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Expert: New Mexico Supreme Court, Dispositional Order of Direct Contempt, State v. Sandoval, S-1-SC-40845 (9 September 2026) ChatGPT was asked to summarise a case record and it filled the gaps with people who do not exist. Santa Fe defence attorney Stephen D. Aarons loaded a computer-generated transcript of his client's murder trial, the record proper, the statement of issues and some discovery into ChatGPT and expected the tool to produce a "bulletproof summary" of the proceedings. The brief in chief he then signed and filed with the New Mexico Supreme Court contained false testimony from four wholly fabricated witnesses - Officer Michelle Amarillo, Officer Sanchez, Manal Al-Jibury and Teresa Marquez - and put invented words in the mouths of witnesses who did appear: Danny Stanton was said to have received threats from the defendant that he took seriously, Linda Stanton to have described threats her husband received, and Mariah Chavez and the fabricated Teresa Marquez to have described the shooter's clothing and appearance. The brief also misrepresented legal authority, citing State v. Lopez, 2005-NMSC-018 and State v. Manus, 1979-NMSC-035 for propositions they do not support. At the show-cause hearing on 21 August 2026 Aarons told the court that he had not verified the factual claims or the legal authority in the AI-generated brief before signing and filing it, and that he had not told his client the brief contained misrepresentations. In its dispositional order of 9 September 2026 the Supreme Court of New Mexico found him in direct contempt, ordered him to pay $5,000 to the State Bar of New Mexico Client Protection Fund within 30 days, referred him to the Disciplinary Board for further proceedings and barred him from appearing before the court while that investigation is pending. All briefing filed in the appeal was stricken and the Law Office of the Public Defender was appointed to represent his former client, with the case to proceed in the court's 2026-2027 term. The court concluded that Aarons had "demonstrated a lack of remorse and a lack of concern for his client." In his written response Aarons said he had not realised ChatGPT would generate "apparently out of whole cloth, fictitious witnesses, testimony, quotations and authorities in a form that appeared coherent and plausible." The failure mode is the one every professional using a general-purpose chatbot has to guard against: asked to summarise a record, the model does not distinguish what is in the source from what it has invented, and fabricates witnesses, quotations and citations in a form that reads exactly like the real thing. A summary you sign is a summary you verify line by line against the record. Source: https://law.justia.com/cases/new-mexico/supreme-court/2026/s-1-sc-40845.html
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