ANALYSIS: AI Hallucination Sanctions Grow as Judges Get Punitive

The pace at which judges are issuing sanctions against lawyers for their improper use of generative artificial intelligence has increased since the beginning of 2025. At the same time, the number of judicial standing orders issued regulating lawyers’ use of AI has dropped off after steady implementation in 2023 and 2024.

Since the debut of AI software ChatGPT in early 2023, 12 sanctions orders have been issued by federal judges against attorneys who improperly used AI in a court filing or document, based on a Bloomberg Law court opinions search. All 12 misdeeds involved lawyers who were caught including, ...