ChatGPT just hallucinated a fake court case in my research

I was fact checking some legal details for a project last night and ChatGPT cited a 2022 ruling that never existed. The judge name, the case number, everything sounded real but it was completely made up. Has anyone else caught these fake citations? How are you double checking results?

2 comments

2 Comments

the_miles14d ago

Man oh man, this exact thing happened to my buddy who works in a law office. He was using it to draft some motions and it totally invented a precedent from a state supreme court that never existed. He said the citation looked perfect down to the page numbers and everything but when he tried to pull it up the whole thing was just made up. Now he has to double check every single source it gives him which honestly defeats the whole purpose of using it in the first place. It's wild how confident it sounds when it's just straight up lying.

henrygrant14d ago

Oh man, this is so spot on. I had basically the same thing happen when I was trying to use one of those AI tools to help me write a blog post about local hiking trails. It gave me this super detailed description of a trail with specific landmarks and mileage and everything, but when I went to check it on Google Maps, that trail didn't even exist. It just completely made up a whole hiking route with fake names for viewpoints and streams. Now I've got to fact check every little thing it spits out, which makes it feel more like a chore than a shortcut. The way it sounds so sure of itself is honestly the creepiest part, like it's not even trying to admit it's wrong.