A federal judge ruled on Wednesday that Michael Cohen, former President Trump's ex-fixer and lawyer, will not face sanctions after using fake legal cases in a court filing generated by artificial intelligence. Cohen, who pleaded guilty to tax and campaign finance violations, is currently under supervised release and has been seeking a reduction in his sentence.
In his latest attempt to have his supervised release terminated early, Cohen provided his attorney with fabricated case citations that were generated by Google's AI chatbot. U.S. District Judge Jesse Furman acknowledged the false citations as 'embarrassing and certainly negligent' but found that Cohen did not act in bad faith as he believed the cases to be real.
Cohen admitted that he misunderstood how AI works and thought Google's AI service, Bard, was a supercharged search engine. He claimed he was unaware that the service could generate fake citations that appeared real. Cohen's attorney argued that his client's testimony in Trump's civil fraud trial demonstrated his remorse and commitment to upholding the law.
However, Judge Furman cited Cohen's contradictory testimony during the trial as a reason to deny his motion for early termination of supervised release. The judge emphasized that Cohen's efforts to distance himself from his prior guilty pleas showed a need for specific deterrence.
Despite the ruling, Cohen's attorney did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Cohen's legal troubles stem from his guilty pleas in 2018 for tax evasion, campaign finance violations, and lying to Congress, which led to his disbarment as a lawyer and a prison sentence.
