Deepfakes In International Arbitration

Deepfakes may soon become a practical problem for international arbitration. Artificial intelligence (AI) has become increasingly integrated into arbitral procedure and decision-making, as discussed in a previous Aceris Law note on LaPaglia v. Valve. AI tools are frequently praised for their capacity to produce large volumes of text, images, audio and video within seconds. Yet their growing use has also exposed one of their most important limitations: their tendency to “hallucinate”, that is, to produce false, misleading, or entirely fabricated information while presenting it as reliable.

At first glance, such errors may appear manageable in legal proceedings. Fabricated legal authorities, however serious, can generally be detected through judges’ verification by assessing the accurate representation of references used. Indeed, in June 2026, a federal judge in Mississippi sanctioned lawyers on both sides after reading their briefs, which cited non-existent case law.¹