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Privilege and work product over AI use

Whether prompts, outputs and chat histories with AI tools are privileged or protected work product. 3 decisions from 3 courts, newest first; 1 read in full from the court's copy.

compiled by the Cognesio LLP editorial teammethodas of 2026-09-07v0.1.1coding CC BY 4.0JSON Hugging Face GitHub

  1. Morgan v. V2X, Inc.

    · U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado

    On 2026-03-30, the District of Colorado amends a protective order in an employment case involving a pro se plaintiff’s AI use. The court protects party work product, requires disclosure of the AI platform used with confidential information, and bars uploads to tools lacking contractual safeguards.

    Here, like in Warner v. Gilbarco, Inc., 2026 WL 373043 (E.D. Mich. Feb. 10, 2026), Plaintiff can assert work product protections in connection with his AI use. It is true that AI systems like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and others widely available to the public, collect user data for training and other purposes. But in this …
  2. United States v. Heppner

    · U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York · provisional

    On 2026-02-17, the Southern District of New York holds that a criminal defendant’s Claude exchanges were not shielded from government review. The court finds no attorney-client privilege or work-product protection because the defendant used the AI tool on his own, not at counsel’s behest.

    Thus, the communications between Heppner and Claude were not privileged at the time they took place. Moreover, even assuming that Heppner intended to share these communications with his counsel and eventually did so, it is black-letter law that non-privileged communications are not somehow alchemically changed into privileged ones upon being shared with counsel. Thus, because …
  3. Warner v. Gilbarco, Inc.

    · U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan · 2026 WL 373043 · provisional

    On 2026-02-10, the Eastern District of Michigan denies defendants’ bid to compel a pro se plaintiff’s AI-use materials. The court holds the requested materials are not discoverable and, in any event, are protected work product; using ChatGPT does not waive that protection.

    To the extent Defendants seek production of “all documents and information concerning her use of third-party AI tools in connection with this lawsuit, as requested in Defendants’ discovery requests,” this request is DENIED, as the information sought is not discoverable. See Fed. R. Civ. P. 26(b)(3)(A) (“Ordinarily, a party may not discover documents and tangible …