Judge refuses to approve attorney Michael Cohen’s AI-generated fake case

A federal judge on Wednesday refused to allow Michael Cohen and his lawyer to submit citations in a case of artificial intelligence (AI)-generated fraud — but an “embarrassing and certainly reckless” incident. reprimanded them for

Cohen, a former fixer for President Trump who pleaded guilty to income tax evasion and other crimes, submitted the fake citations to his attorney as he sought to get Cohen out of his supervised release early. A new attempt was made.

In a 13-page ruling issued Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Jesse Furman denied the motion — Cohen’s fourth attempt, but the judge declined to impose sanctions against Cohen or his attorney, David Schwartz, for the falsified references. gave

“The court has no basis to question Cohen’s representation that he believes the cases are genuine,” Furman wrote. “Indeed, it would have been completely unreasonable for him to provide Schwartz with bogus cases to implicate the movement, knowing that they were bogus – given the possibility that Schwartz himself would discover the problem and The motion will not include the lawsuits (as it should have) or, failing that, the issue will be discovered by the government or a court, with potentially serious negative consequences for Cohen himself. shall be.”

Cohen’s use of AI marked a surprising turn in his criminal case, but it was caught after a series of lawyers using such software to provide fake case references. Last June, a judge cleared two lawyers after one admitted to using the AI-powered chatbot ChatGPT to create fake case referrals. Cohen said he used Google’s Gemini, formerly known as Bard.

Two days after Cohen acknowledged the use of AI, Chief Justice John Roberts made AI the focus of his recent annual report, calling on the judiciary to determine its appropriate use in the legal system.

Cohen’s latest motion to shorten his supervised release was primarily prompted by his testimony at Trump’s Manhattan civil fraud trial, during which the former president’s former fixer testified that he and Another Trump Organization executive will “reverse engineer” Trump assets. like it

But, agreeing with prosecutors, Furman said Cohen’s testimony at trial actually “provides reason to deny his motion, not [to] Grant it.”

During Cohen’s cross-examination in October, Trump lawyer Alina Haba questioned the former fixer about the veracity of past and current testimony. He pointed to testimony in which he denied being guilty of the crimes for which he was convicted and accused him of violating his oath to testify truthfully either He requested or on the stand that day.

“You lied in that proceeding, didn’t you?” Haba asked. “Did you lie to the judge? [William] PAULIE When did you say you were guilty?”

“Yes,” Cohen replied.

Furman called Cohen’s testimony in the fraud trial “disingenuous” for citing the disbarred attorney’s “commitment to uphold the law,” saying that Cohen’s conflicting accounts meant that He has declared himself a liar.

“At the very least, Cohen’s ongoing and increasing efforts to distance himself from earlier accepting responsibility for his crimes are clear evidence of the ongoing need for specific deterrence,” Furman wrote.