Beyond the Mirage: Beware of Generative AI and Hallucinations; New York State Bar Association (NYSBA), June 26, 2026

Cynthia Feathers , New York State Bar Association (NYSBA); Beyond the Mirage: Beware of Generative AI and Hallucinations

"The work of attorneys can be arduous. With demanding caseloads comes an openness to tools that can help us do our jobs more efficiently. The advent of online legal research was a game changer for attorneys decades ago. In recent years, generative artificial intelligence – AI that can create original content such as text, images, video, audio or software code in response to a user’s prompt or request – has begun to revolutionize legal practice.[1] This development has included the integration of AI into legal research and writing.

The focus here is on the risks inherent in popular generative AI models used to complete such tasks: They are prone to producing false legal information, so-called hallucinations, including false case citations and false reasoning, quotes and holdings. A nationwide epidemic of cases involving such fabrications has made the risks of unverified AI use well known. Hundreds of decisions have touched on this issue.[2] Thus, the legal profession has been alerted that blind faith in generative AI results is misplaced.

This article makes no attempt to be exhaustive as to the rapidly unfolding case law but does seek to highlight some emblematic decisions issued by state, federal, trial and appellate courts throughout the country over the last two years and to bring attention to the dangers of failing to check AI results...

Evolving technology is seductive in creating the illusion that it can save us from the hard work. But our ethical duties to our clients and the courts still require that we rigorously verify every case cited. When generative AI output becomes more reliable, new questions will arise about how far we can go in abdicating our lawyerly judgment to new technology.[20]

For now, New York attorneys should be aware of a new rule on AI adopted by the New York State Unified Court System. Effective June 1, Part 161 of the Rules of the Chief Administrator of the Courts permits the use of AI tools in preparing submissions to a court and does not require the disclosure of such use. However, Part 161 sets forth a model rule that does require attorneys using such tools to “carefully review” each submission and “independently ensure” that they do not contain “fabricated or fictitious cases, statutes, or other material.”[21]  Individual judges retain discretion to implement their own AI-related rules, adopt the model rule or impose no additional requirements through their part rules.

Perhaps soon we will see more standing orders on AI use and updated ethics rules nationwide targeting AI issues.[22]  In the meantime, in the use of AI, we can be guided by the new court rule and longstanding mandates regarding competence, diligence, accuracy and candor and the supervision of lawyers and nonlawyers."

Even in Defeat, a Democrat Showed the Upside of Angering the A.I. Industry; The New York Times, June 24, 2026

 Theodore Schleifer , The New York Times; Even in Defeat, a Democrat Showed the Upside of Angering the A.I. Industry

Alex Bores’s close loss in New York could pave the way for other Democrats to take political advantage of being attacked by the increasingly unpopular A.I. industry.

"The New York race — the first in the country to draw such large amounts of money from A.I. interests — signaled the battles to come over an industry that has quickly grown more unpopular with voters but has astronomical sums of money it can use to shape how it is regulated.

Mr. Bores’s respectable showing demonstrated how tech-skeptical Democratic candidates might be able to exploit the political liabilities of the A.I. industry, which is engaged in a midterm proxy war between two of its top companies, Anthropic and OpenAI, and their allied super PACs."

Why I’m Suing Grammarly; The New York Times, March 13, 2026

Julia Angwin, The New York Times ; Why I’m Suing Grammarly

"Like all writers, I live by my wits. My ability to earn a living rests on my ability to craft a phrase, to synthesize an idea, to make readers care about people and places they can only access through words on a page. Grammarly hadn’t checked with me before using my name. I only learned that an A.I. company was selling a deepfake of my mind from an article online.

And it wasn’t just me. Superhuman — the parent company of Grammarly — made fake editor versions of a range of people, including the novelist Stephen King, the late feminist author bell hooks, the former Microsoft chief privacy officer Julie Brill, the University of Virginia data science professor Mar Hicks and the journalist and podcaster Kara Swisher.

At this point in a story about A.I. exploitation, I would normally bemoan the need for new laws to tackle the novel harms of a new technology. But in this case, there is an old law that’s able to do the job.

In my home state of New York, the century-old right of publicity law prohibits a person’s name or image from being used for commercial purposes without her consent. At least 25 states have similar publicity statutes. And now, I’m using this law to fight back. I am the lead plaintiff in a class-action lawsuit against Superhuman in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, alleging that it violated New York and California publicity laws by not seeking consent before using our names in a paid service...

In this global crisis of consent, we must grab hold of the few anchors we have for enforcement. The right of publicity is one of them, but it needs to be strengthened into a federal law — not just a patchwork of state laws. In some states, it applies only to advertising; in others, to all types of commercial uses. In some, it only covers celebrities; in others, it applies to everyone...

Denmark has taken a novel approach: proposing an amendment to copyright laws that would allow people to copyright their bodies, facial features and voices to protect against A.I. deepfakes. I’d be happy to copyright myself — as copyright seems to be the only law that is regularly enforced on the internet these days...

What Grammarly made wasn’t a doppelgänger. As the writer Ingrid Burrington wrote on Bluesky, it was a sloppelgänger — A.I. slop masquerading as a person.

And it must be stopped."

Lawyer sets new standard for abuse of AI; judge tosses case; Ars Technica, February 6, 2026

 ASHLEY BELANGER , Ars Technica; Lawyer sets new standard for abuse of AI; judge tosses case

"Frustrated by fake citations and flowery prose packed with “out-of-left-field” references to ancient libraries and Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, a New York federal judge took the rare step of terminating a case this week due to a lawyer’s repeated misuse of AI when drafting filings.

In an order on Thursday, District Judge Katherine Polk Failla ruled that the extraordinary sanctions were warranted after an attorney, Steven Feldman, kept responding to requests to correct his filings with documents containing fake citations."

Artificial Intelligence Law - Intellectual Property Protection for your voice?; JDSupra, January 22, 2024

Steve Vondran, JDSupra ; Artificial Intelligence Law - Intellectual Property Protection for your voice?

"With the advent of AI technology capable of replicating a person's voice and utilizing it for commercial purposes, several key legal issues are likely to emerge under California's right of publicity law. The right of publicity refers to an individual's right to control and profit from their own name, image, likeness, or voice.

Determining the extent of a person's control over their own voice will likely become a contentious legal matter given the rise of AI technology. In 2024, with a mere prompt and a push of a button, a creator can generate highly accurate voice replicas, potentially allowing companies to utilize a person's voice without their explicit permission for example using a AI generated song in a video, or podcast, or using it as a voice-over for a commercial project. This sounds like fun new technology, until you realize that in states like California where a "right of publicity law" exists a persons VOICE can be a protectable asset that one can sue to protect others who wrongfully misuse their voice for commercial advertising purposes.

This blog will discuss a few new legal issues I see arising in our wonderful new digital age being fueled by the massive onset of Generative AI technology (which really just means you input prompts into an AI tool and it will generate art, text, images, music, etc."