In June 2023, the Commonwealth Department of Industry, Science and Resources commenced a consultation into “Safe and Responsible AI in Australia.”
It focused on developing governance mechanisms to ensure the safe and responsible development and use of AI and identifying potential gaps in Australia’s current regulatory frameworks.
In the Consultation, the Commonwealth Department adopted this definition of AI:
“An engineered system that generates predictive outputs such as content, forecasts, recommendations or decisions for a given set of human-defined objectives or parameters without explicit programming. AI systems are designed to operate with varying levels of automation.”
As yet, there are no specific statutes or regulations in Australia that directly regulate AI nor has there been a definition of AI formally adopted by any statutes or regulations in Australia – however, this is likely to change as time goes on with the rapid rise of AI.
In the past, we’ve shared more on the adopted AI Ethics Framework which outlines 8 principles designed to ensure AI is safe, secure and reliable. Check them out here.
Like many industries, the legal industry has been affected by the use and adoption of generative AI models. There are both cautionary examples of using AI in court cases, as well as people successfully utilising AI to help them win their case.
Let’s explore further below;
(And click here for a recap on an older blog article of ours exploring AI in the legal industry).
Melbourne Law Firm to Pay Costs for Using Fabricated AI Court Case Citations
In a warning to legal professionals about the unsupervised use of AI (artificial intelligence), a Melbourne law firm has come under fire for using incorrect citations in a native title determination.
Justice Bernard Murphy directed Massar Briggs Law to pay indemnity costs after a junior solicitor used the Google Scholar search tool to produce incorrect court document citations.
When First Nations Legal and Research Services, which was tasked with producing the final footnotes documents for the court, reviewed Massar Briggs Law’s submission, it could not find the cited anthropological and historical reports and papers in any internal and external databases.
Murphy’s order in the Massar Briggs Law case usually wouldn’t be significant enough to warrant publicity but was later determined the order would help inform the legal profession of the “growing problem regarding false citations in documents prepared using AI.”
In April this year, Chief Justice Debra Mortimer notified legal professionals that the Federal Court was considering developing guidelines or a practice note in relation to the use of generative AI.
We’ve previously shared the cautionary tale of two lawyers in New York who were sanctioned by a federal judge for submitting a legal brief written by ChatGPT, which included citations of non-existent court cases.
ChatGPT Helps a Customer Receive a Refund on Faulty Electric Vehicle
The AFR recently shared the story of Anthony James who successfully used ChatGPT to help secure a refund on his faulty electric vehicle (EV) from Genesis – Hyundai Motor Company’s luxury wing. James said the drawn-out dispute over software glitches left him so disappointed he didn’t want the vehicle anymore and turned to ChatGPT to help him navigate the internal complaint’s process, particularly as he was seeking a full refund.
James input as many consumer law precedents involving cars that he could find on the internet, into custom ChatGPT model “GPTs”, which helped him interpret complex legal jargon, draft emails to Genesis, and fact-check emails used in correspondence with Genesis.
James was quoted by the AFR as saying; “I was able to respond and act quickly, but respond with absolute precision. So, when there was overreach, I was able to quote specific laws or clauses in consumer law, and it started to build a very watertight argument and discussion that had no emotion. But it was thorough, it was logical, and it had that legally informed reasoning.”
Some legal experts have said this is a positive example of how AI can help consumers in disputes against large corporations.
You can read more from the AFR here.
The Future of Dispute Resolution?
Also quoted in the AFR article is Law professor Jeannie Paterson at the University of Melbourne’s Centre for Artificial Intelligence and Digital Ethics, who said “using generative AI in consumer disputes could improve access to justice for consumers and ultimately help free up courts from trivial matters.”
For many consumers, the cost of hiring legal help to navigate dispute resolution on their behalf with a large corporation, outweighs the remedy being sought. In these instances, it makes sense that many see the positives in generative AI to help empower consumers and to free up the courts from trivial matters.
As AI models advance and become better over the years, it’s wise to exercise caution in the meantime as they still can produce incorrect, false or misleading information.
