About 80 pct of Korean judges encounter AI-generated fake legal precedents: survey

SEOUL, Nov. 2 (Yonhap) -- Eight in 10 South Korean judges have experienced court cases in which false or nonexistent legal precedents generated by artificial intelligence (AI) were cited, a recent survey by the Supreme Court released Monday showed.

The top court published the outcome of the survey conducted on 360 judges from Oct. 6-16 as it sought to examine increasingly worrisome cases of "AI hallucination" -- a term referring to a situation where AI models present false information as if they were true.

In the survey, about 80 percent of the judges in charge of civil, family and administrative cases said that they had experienced cases in which nonexistent or false precedents were cited.

Of those, 196 judges, or 80.7 percent, said they had seen the citations of nonexistent legal precedents in court cases, while 159 judges, or 65.4 percent, said have they encountered cases involving the citations of false precedents.

The survey also showed that 41 judges, or 16.9 percent, encountered cases in which false or non-existent laws and regulations were cited, while 10 judges, or 4.1 percent, said they have seen citations of false or non-existent theses and publications.

A total of 164 judges said they themselves have cited false precedents, while 136, or 57.6 percent, said that lawyers representing parties in court had cited false precedents or other information.

Nearly 92 percent of respondents said there need to be institutional measures to address the citations of AI-generated fake precedents.

Those measures include setting up legal grounds for imposing fines, establishing verification requirements and devising disciplinary measures against lawyers repeatedly citing false information.

An official at the National Court Administration pointed out that citing AI-generated false or nonexistent legal precedents may lead to a delay in court proceedings, underscoring a need to craft effective countermeasures based on the survey results.

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