Citing AI-generated, non-existent judgments a growing menace in courts worldwide: Supreme Court

The Supreme Court recently flagged the growing menace of litigants and lawyers citing Artificial Intelligence-generated, non-existent judgments in their petitions/ arguments [Heart & Soul Entertainment Ltd v Deepak s/o Shivkumar Bahry].

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.

The petitioner appeared in person.

Senior Advocate Madhavi Divan with advocates Pranav Sarthi, Janay Jain, Rishabh Jadhav, and Sameer appeared for the respondent.

[Read Order]