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Smith v. P.A.M. Transport, Inc.

U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit · Federal courts of appeals · · No. 24-5549 · opinion

The court's own use of AIcourt used AIChatGPT

On 2025-09-25, the Sixth Circuit remands hostile-work-environment claims for trial. The majority notes the concurrence’s ChatGPT inquiry into a workplace slur and warns that ChatGPT consolidates text patterns without verifying sources; the concurrence cites the ChatGPT response among context-specific interpretive materials.

Disposition
The court reversed summary judgment and remanded; the majority noted and criticized the concurrence’s ChatGPT inquiry about a disputed phrase.

What the court wrote

Verbatim from the court's document (public domain). Ellipses mark omitted text; nothing is paraphrased.

The concurrence cites a ChatGPT inquiry asking, “What does monkey ass mean?” Conc. op. at 22. ChatGPT functions as a consolidator of information, synthesizing patterns from a vast body of text, but it does not independently verify the accuracy of any material or its unknown sources. The information provided in the concurrence’s permalink to Urban Dictionary speaks for itself. ... Does the term “monkey ass,” a phrase understandably not included in traditional dictionaries, have the same racial connotation as the term “monkey”? See Monkey Ass, Urban Dictionary (last visited Sep. 22, 2025), https://perma.cc/RRF9-D7ZC (offering definitions such as “One who acts badly or stupid,” “A stubborn child, esp[ecially] one that exhibits monkey-like traits (e.g. small, agile, and wild),” and “The resultant condition from prolonged periods of poor personal hygiene . . . .”); see also ChatGPT, “What does monkey ass mean?” (Sep. 23, 2025), https://perma.cc/SS32-JRUX (explaining that monkey ass can be “potentially racial (depending on context)” but also an “insult or put-down (non-specific),” “emphasizing someone acting wild or stupid,” or “used in joking or aggressive banter” (citation modified)).

Authorities cited in the passage: ChatGPT, “What does monkey ass mean?” (Sep. 23, 2025) · Urban Dictionary, “Monkey Ass”

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