ChatGPT Convinced Illinois Woman To Fire Her Human Lawyer

AI may be more validating than your delusional best friend.

We hear all kinds of stories about things AI has convinced people to do. Guys proposing to their AI chatbot girlfriends, girls falling in love with their AI boyfriends, it never ends.

Now, according to NewsNation, a lawsuit claims ChatGPT is behind one woman firing her definitely human attorney.

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Life insurance company Nippon claims ChatGPT (owned by OpenAI) acted like a lawyer and convinced a woman to fire her real, human attorney.

Here's the backstory: Nippon says that they settled a long-term disability lawsuit with Illinois woman Graciela Dela Torre 2 years ago. She signed a full release and the case was dismissed with prejudice, meaning it can't be refiled.

And the now: last year, Dela Torre wanted to reopen the case. Her attorney told her the settlement was final.

She didn't like that so she turned to ChatGPT.

According to Nippon's lawsuit, ChatGPT helped her draft filings to try to undo the settlement. She filed them pro se (without a lawyer). A judge denied the effort.

Dela Torre wasn't done.

After the judge's ruling, she filed a new case with dozens of filings generated from ChatGPT. Nippon claims responding to the mishap cost them almost $300,000.

Michael Stanisci, Vice President of DemandLane and not affiliated with the case, said:

This is actually the first real time I’ve seen a plaintiff or a claimant actually try and represent themselves 100%, and it got through the court system, and that’s been a revolutionary area...[AI] has access to nearly infinite human intelligence. What it lacks is the wisdom, right? It’s like a child trying to appease and make sure that it’s being praised by the end user. So it draws upon everything possible in its ethos, in its universe to answer a prompt. And when the end user, Graciela in this situation, asked a prompt that pretty much had no real secure answer, this child AI imagined an answer and came up with the solution, and so it brings up a broader conversation.

If you've ever used ChatGPT, you know it's going to validate you in whatever context. As the chatbot relates to the legal system, Stanisci called this case "groundbreaking".