Michael Cohen loses court motion after lawyer cited AI-invented cases

Enlarge / Michael Cohen, former personal lawyer to former US President Donald Trump, arrives at federal court in New York on December 14, 2023. (credit: Getty Images | Bloomberg)

A federal judge decided not to sanction Michael Cohen and his lawyer for a court filing that included three fake citations generated by the Google Bard AI tool.

Cohen’s lawyer, David M. Schwartz, late last year filed the court brief that cites three cases that do not exist. It turned out that Cohen passed the fake cases along to Schwartz, who didn’t do a fact-check before submitting them as part of a motion in US District Court for the Southern District of New York.

US District Judge Jesse Furman declined to impose sanctions on either Cohen or Schwartz in a ruling issued today. But there was bad news for Cohen because Furman denied a motion for early termination of his supervised release.