The of a video persona with to help make an argument a stern rebuke.
Jerome Dewald sat with his legs crossed and his hands in his lap in front of an panel of New York State judges, ready to argue for a of a ’s in his dispute with a .
The had allowed Mr. Dewald, who is not a and was himself, to accompany his argument with a video presentation.
As the video began to , it showed a man younger than Mr. Dewald’s 74 years wearing a blue, collared shirt and a beige and standing in front of what appeared to be a blurred virtual .
A few seconds into the video, one of the judges, by the on the , asked Mr. Dewald if the man was his .
“I that,” Mr. Dewald responded. “That is not a real person.”
The judge, Justice Sallie Manzanet-Daniels of the Appellate Division’s First Judicial Department, for a moment. It was she was with his answer.
“It would have been nice to know that when you made your ,” she at him.
“I don’t being ,” she before yelling for someone to off the video.
What Mr. Dewald to was that he had the digital , the example of A.I. into the U.S. legal system in potentially ways.
The hearing at which Mr. Dewald made his presentation, on March 26, was filmed by system cameras and reported earlier by The Associated Press.
Reached on Friday, Mr. Dewald, the plaintiff in the , said he had been by embarrassment at the hearing. He said he had sent the judges a letter of apology shortly afterward, his deep and that his actions had “ misled” the .
He said he had the after his words in previous legal proceedings. Using A.I. for the presentation, he , might the he felt in the courtroom.
He said he had to make a digital of himself but had encountered “technical ” in doing so, which him to a fake person for the instead.
“My intent was never to deceive but rather to my arguments in the most possible,” he said in his letter to the judges. “However, I that proper and transparency must always take .”
A self- entrepreneur, Mr. Dewald was appealing an earlier in a contract dispute with a . He an oral argument at the appellate hearing, and taking to and read from his cellphone.
As as he might be, Mr. Dewald could take some in the fact that have gotten into for A.I. in .
In 2023, a New York after he ChatGPT to a legal with fake judicial and legal . The the in and throughout the legal .
The same year, Michael Cohen, a and for President Trump, his with legal citations he had gotten from Google Bard, an program. Mr. Cohen from the federal judge his , that he had not known the text service could false information.
Some say that and large language models can be helpful to people who have legal matters to with but cannot . Still, the ’s .
“They can still — very information” that is “either fake or ,” said Daniel Shin, the assistant of at the Center for Legal and Court Technology at the William & Mary Law School. “That has to be .”