The Arkansas Supreme Court on Thursday ordered an attorney to show cause why she should not be sanctioned for using artificial intelligence in preparing a petition filed with the court.
In its order, the court said Dana McClain was acting as an attorney for a child in an expedited matter when she submitted the petition. The filing included citations to court cases that could not be located, along with quotations attributed to those cases. The petition also cited a statute without acknowledging that the law had since been changed.
“We are concerned that the citations may have been the result of generative artificial intelligence (GAI) tools and thus ‘hallucinated,'” the court wrote. The order noted that the Arkansas Supreme Court Committee on Professional Conduct had been notified of the issue.
McClain was directed to respond in writing and explain why she should not be sanctioned. The court ordered her to submit an affidavit detailing whether she relied on GAI, which tools were used, the prompts entered, how the citations were generated, and what documents, if any, were uploaded into the system.
In a footnote, the court also expressed concern that confidential or sealed information related to a juvenile may have been uploaded into an artificial intelligence platform.
Also on Thursday, the court announced it had adopted a previously proposed rule warning of the risks associated with uploading confidential or sealed information into generative artificial intelligence tools. The rule states that doing so may violate existing court rules governing document handling and professional conduct.
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