New Delhi, March 26 The Supreme Court has expressed concern over the growing "menace" of litigants and lawyers citing non-existent judgments generated by artificial intelligence.
A bench comprising Justices Rajesh Bindal and Vijay Bishnoi said that the practice is becoming increasingly rampant across courts in India and throughout the world.
The observations were made by the top court while expunging remarks made by the Bombay High Court on a plea filed by a director of a company.
"As a matter of indulgence, we expunge the remarks made in the aforesaid paragraph. However, the fact remains that this menace is rampant in all courts now, not only in India but throughout the world. Everyone needs to be careful about this. In fact, this court is already aware of this matter from a judicial perspective," the bench said.
The high court had noted in its order that the submissions of the appellant were generated using ChatGPT, including a judgment which had no citation in the real world.
"The respondent filed written submissions in February 2025 and April 2025. Based on the overall tenor of the written submissions and a few giveaway features, such as green-box tick marks, bullet-point marks, repetitive submissions, etc., this court strongly feels that the submissions were prepared using an AI tool such as ChatGPT or similar.
"A strong pointer is seen from a reference made to one alleged case law 'Jyoti w/o Dinesh Tulsiani Vs. Elegant Associates'. Neither citation is given nor a copy of the judgment is supplied by the respondent. This court and its law clerks were at pains to find out this case law but could not find. This has resulted in a waste of precious judicial time," the high court had said.
It had said that an AI tool can very well be used to aid research but there is a great responsibility on the parties to cross-verify the references and the materials generated by it.