Lawyer Ex Machina #47 - Summer ed. - August 2023
Related: 4 Generative AI Issues that Are Likely to Keep Judges Up at Night [Law.com ($)]
AI
The Federal Election Commission is seeking comments on a petition by Public Citizen to "amend its regulation on fraudulent misrepresentation of campaign authority to make clear that the related statutory prohibition applies to deliberately deceptive Artificial Intelligence campaign ads." [Federal Register | FEC website]
From Ars Technica: "Seven companies — including OpenAI, Microsoft, Google, Meta, Amazon, Anthropic, and Inflection —have committed to developing tech to clearly watermark AI-generated content." [Story | White House statement]
A Detroit woman is suing the city of Detroit and one of its police detectives after she was arrested on suspicion of robbery & carjacking, based on a hit from a facial recognition system.
- AI and academia
The Mason City Community School District in Iowa recently admitted to using ChatGPT to screen books with sexual content to remove from middle and high school libraries, following passage of a state law requiring schools to only have 'age-appropriate' material that does not have “descriptions or visual depictions of a sex act”
Programs that attempt to detect generative AI text in student writing tend to more heavily flag international students, especially non-native English speakers, than other students
Arizona State University's Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law announced that applicants can use GenAI programs, like ChatGPT, in their application materials, while University of Michigan Law School has banned applicants from using such tools
- AI and law
Tom Martin, creator of LawDroid, on whether GenAI can help narrow the access to justice gap.
Related: AI might soon help people who represent themselves in court, despite ethical concerns
3 Geeks and a Law Blog has a three-part series on the effects of GenAI adoption on law firms: employment, revenue and profitability
The ABA Journal [$] has a story on how the California Innocence Project has used GenAI in its exoneration work. [archived version]
Cryptocurrency
OpenAI's CEO, Sam Altman, has launched a cryptocurrency & digital ID project called WorldCoin that exchanges tokens for iris scans; privacy regulators in Argentina have launched an investigation and the government of Kenya has stopped the entity from new enrollments. [NPR | Voice of America | Techpoint | NY Times ($) | Politico]
The judge in the SEC v. Ripple case, who ruled last month that Ripple's token was not a security in certain sales, has granted the SEC's motion for leave to file an interlocutory appeal
Data Privacy
Illinois has passed an anti-doxxing law, part of an initiative by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL).
Miscellaneous
The California Public Utilities Commission has voted to approve the operation of driveless/autonomous taxis throughout San Francisco, despite opposition from "first responders, city transportation leaders and local activists."
A task force of the New Jersey State Bar Association has issued a report opposing the provision of legal services and law firm ownership by those not admitted as attorneys to a state bar. [Press release | Report draft]
The American Bar Association's Center for Innovation was set to publish an op-ed arguing for regulatory reform in the wake of the DoNotPay controversy, but pulled the piece out of concern for "political challenges" within the ABA. [LawNext: Article | Podcast with op-ed writers]
The Florida Bar has issued a proposed advisory opinion (currently open for comment) on whether a Florida attorney can be a passive investor in an alternative business structure that provides legal services in Utah. [More on ABSs and regulatory reform in Utah]
Richard E. Meyers II, Chief United States District Judge North Carolina, has issued a standing order prohibiting attorneys in the jurisdiction from using third-party docket management services that can collect cases via CM/EMF, including but not limited to DocketBird, PacerPRO and RECAP.
Long Reads
Choi, Jonathan H. and Schwarcz, Daniel B., AI Assistance in Legal Analysis: An Empirical Study (August 13, 2023). Available at SSRN: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4539836
Grossman, Maura and Grimm, Paul and Brown, Dan and Xu, Molly, The GPTJudge: Justice in a Generative AI World (May 23, 2023). Duke Law & Technology Review, Vol. 23, No. 1, 2023, Duke Law School Public Law & Legal Theory Series No. 2023-30, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4460184
Smith, Michael L., Language Models, Plagiarism, and Legal Writing (August 16, 2023). University of New Hampshire Law Review, Vol. 22, (Forthcoming 2024), Available at SSRN: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4542723