Frustrated judge tosses case with fake AI citations, references to Ray Bradbury's 'Fahrenheit 451'
A federal judge has tossed a case after berating an attorney for misusing artificial intelligence and using extensive quotes from Ray Bradbury’s book “Fahrenheit 451.”
References to author Ray Bradbury’s 1953 dystopian book Fahrenheit 451, fake citations and “out-of-left-field” references to ancient libraries has prompted a New York federal judge to terminate a case because of a lawyer’s repeated misuse of artificial intelligence.
Judge Katherine Polk Failla of the Southern District of New York wrote in an order last week that the “extraordinary” sanctions were warranted after an attorney, Steven Feldman, kept responding to requests to correct his filings with documents containing fake citations, Ars Technica reports.
One of those filings was “noteworthy,” Failla said, “for its conspicuously florid prose.”
Where some of Feldman’s filings contained grammatical errors and run-on sentences, this filing seemed glaringly different stylistically, the story noted.
It featured, the judge pointed out in her order, “an extended quote from Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 and metaphors comparing legal advocacy to gardening and the leaving of indelible ‘mark[s] upon the clay.’”
According to Ars Technica, although the judge suspected that Feldman used AI to help write his filings, he testified that he wrote every word in them. He explained that he read the Bradbury book “many years ago” and wanted to include “personal things” in that filing.
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