He believes AI more than anything..
A man in Singapore learned a tough lesson about relying on artificial intelligence after he used ChatGPT to prepare his court documents. He was representing himself in a case to get a Personal Protection Order (PPO) against his ex-wife, but things didn’t go as planned.
The court, specifically Magistrate Soh Kian Peng, found some major problems with the man’s legal submissions. A total of 14 legal cases that he cited simply did not exist. They were completely made up by the AI, which the court referred to as “AI-hallucinated.” The man admitted that he had used the AI tool and hadn’t checked if the information was accurate before submitting his papers to the court.
The case involved a dispute between the former spouses who were both trying to get PPOs for themselves and their two daughters. After reviewing CCTV footage of one of the incidents, the magistrate decided that while the parents’ actions were “less than ideal,” they weren’t serious enough to be considered family violence. As a result, the court rejected all PPO applications from both the man and his ex-wife.
The magistrate emphasized a very important point: if you use AI to help with court documents, you are fully responsible for making sure the content is correct. To prevent this from happening again, he ordered the man to sign a document if he uses generative AI in the future. In this document, he would have to confirm he has followed the court’s official guide on using such tools. The court doesn’t forbid the use of AI, but it stressed the importance of using real legal examples to keep the legal system credible.
In a touching moment, the magistrate ended his judgment by quoting a poem by Kahlil Gibran, encouraging the couple to put aside their differences for the sake of their children.
Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.
The man was also ordered to pay S$1,000 to the mother to cover some of her costs.
