Artificial Advocacy: How Canadian Courts And Legislators Are Responding To Generative AI

Introduction

Generative artificial intelligence is steadily making its way into daily legal practice. While this evolving technology offers incredible potential to optimize legal processes and improve access to justice, it must be used responsibly. Among other things, the increased use of this type of AI has resulted in inaccurate or non-existent legal citations in court materials (colloquially referred to as "hallucinations"). One independent global database has tracked more than 150 known cases of hallucinations in court to date.

As the AI landscape evolves, Canadian courts and legislatures have been grappling with the use of AI in the courtroom. Below, we provide a brief guide to the different rules and directions issued to date to address AI in Canadian courts, as well as a review of several recent decisions involving hallucinations in Canadian court filings.