Judge asks Chat-GPT for help: innovative or dangerous?

It was not only news in ‘lawyer land‘, the FD and BNR also wrote about it. A judge who used ChatGPT to reach a verdict. Judges who embrace technology are moving with the times, you could say. Modern justice. But is this legally tenable?

What was this case about?

Briefly. Two neighbours were in litigation with each other. There was allegedly a loss of efficiency of one neighbour’s solar panels due to the other’s roof construction. As a result, the owner of the solar panels believed he had suffered damages. After a hearing took place, the judge started writing a judgment.

Help with damage assessment

As the judge could not accurately determine the amount of the damage based on the information provided to him by the parties, he proceeded to estimate the damage (Article 6:97 Civil Code). To do so, the judge used, among other things, ChatGPT.

In another case, the Supreme Court has previously ruled that when estimating damages, adversarial proceedings must be conducted. The parties must have had sufficient opportunity to comment on information used by the judge in the estimation. Usually, this information in the form of procedural documents has already been dealt with, for example at the hearing. But what if the judge himself wants to look up information and use it in his judgment? Just googling something is everyday practice for most people, but what about when a judge wants to do that?

Hearing and rebuttal

The following has been determined about this in past literature and case law. If a judge has found information on the internet, then the parties should be informed and asked for a response. This thus relates to the aforementioned requirement of adversarial proceedings.

If we compare the situation of the googling judge and the judge using ChatGPT, there are many similarities. After all, ChatGPT also uses internet sources to arrive at a result. By the way, these are often internet sources that only go back to a certain point in time. For instance, the result (depending on the subscription) is based on internet sources up to 2021. So not always up to date. The dominant view among legal experts seems to be that even when using ChatGPT information, the court should adhere to the Supreme Court’s standard that parties should be given an opportunity to be heard if they so wish.

Conclusion

Innovation within (procedural) law is encouraged from various quarters. The criticism of this ruling does make it clear that the use of innovative tools such as ChatGPT within procedural law is subject to the necessary points of attention. One could therefore say that it is ‘unprecedented’ that this judge used ChatGPT.

Get advice

Do you have any questions? Then contact one of our lawyers by mail, telephone or fill in the contact form for a free initial consultation. We will be happy to think along with you.