Skip to content

Incident Tracker / United States (federal)

Kohls v. Ellison, No. 0:24-cv-03754 (D. Minn.)

·US District Court, District of Minnesota·US-FEDOther

In the US District Court for Minnesota, an expert declaration defending the state's political-deepfakes law was itself tainted by AI: Stanford professor Jeff Hancock's GPT-4o-drafted report cited two fabricated academic articles and misattributed a third. Judge Laura Provinzino excluded the declaration, calling it ironic that an AI-misinformation expert fell for AI's 'siren call'.

Court
US District Court, District of Minnesota
Date
2025-01-10
Who used the AI
Not recorded
AI tool
GPT-4o
Conduct
In a First Amendment challenge to Minnesota's political-deepfakes statute, the State's expert — Stanford misinformation professor Jeff Hancock — filed a declaration drafted with GPT-4o that cited two non-existent academic articles and misattributed a third. Hancock admitted using AI and not verifying the citations.
Outcome
Other
Penalty
No monetary penalty recorded
Regulatory outcome
No separate regulatory disposition recorded
Status
Verified against listed sources
Last checked
2026-09-16

What was fabricated or misused

  • Two non-existent academic articles in Professor Hancock's declaration — order did not name the articles
  • Third academic article in Professor Hancock's declaration — authors incorrectly cited; order did not name the article
  • GPT-4o-generated fake citations to academic articles — included without verification

What the court said

“Professor Hancock, who subsequently admitted that his declaration inadvertently included citations to two non-existent academic articles, and incorrectly cited the authors of a third article.”
US District Court, District of Minnesota, Doc. 46 at 3
“GPT-4o provided Professor Hancock with fake citations to academic articles, which Professor Hancock failed to verify before including them in his declaration.”
US District Court, District of Minnesota, Doc. 46 at 3
“Professor Hancock submitted a declaration made under penalty of perjury with fake citations.”
US District Court, District of Minnesota, Doc. 46 at 8
“The Court cannot accept false statements—innocent or not—in an expert’s declaration submitted under penalty of perjury.”
US District Court, District of Minnesota, Doc. 46 at 11

Timeline

  1. Court filed Doc. 46 on motions to exclude experts and amend the Hancock declaration.
  2. Order recorded Hancock's admission that GPT-4o generated fake academic citations.
  3. Court excluded the Hancock declaration from the preliminary-injunction decision.
  4. Court denied Attorney General Ellison's motion to file an amended Hancock declaration as moot.

Why this case matters

Kohls is different from lawyer-brief cases such as Mata v Avianca and McCarthy v DEA because the false material came through an expert witness, not an advocate's legal research. The order tied citation checking to expert reliability and Rule 11 supervision: counsel may need to ask witnesses whether AI helped draft a declaration and how any AI content was checked. The case also shows that a prompt correction did not save the declaration; the court excluded it rather than accepting a cleaned-up substitute.

Practice note

Counsel offering an expert declaration should ask, before filing, whether the expert used AI to draft text or citations. If yes, the expert or counsel should verify every article in a scholarly database or publisher page and retain the check. A later amended declaration may not cure a filing made under penalty of perjury with fake sources.

Primary sources for this incident

Related regulation records for this incident

No related regulation record has been linked to this incident yet.

Similar incidents on the record

  • Turgeon v. FHLMC, No. 1:25-cv-00510-SM-TSM (D.N.H.)2026-08-26 · US District Court, District of New Hampshire · OtherIn the District of New Hampshire, self-represented debtor Noella Turgeon appealed a bankruptcy order that struck her objection after false, hallucinated citations. Judge McAuliffe held the bankruptcy court acted within…
  • In re Brian E. Mitchell, USPTO Proceeding No. D2026-162026-07-27 · US Patent and Trademark Office, Office of Enrollment and Discipline · OtherThe US Patent and Trademark Office's Office of Enrollment and Discipline publicly reprimanded California patent attorney Brian Mitchell, whose AI-drafted claim-construction chart in a federal patent case cited nonexiste…
  • In re Prince Global Holdings Ltd., No. 26-10769 (MG) (Bankr. S.D.N.Y.), Sullivan & Cromwell AI-citation disclosure2026-04-18 · US Bankruptcy Court, Southern District of New York (Chief Judge Martin Glenn) · OtherIn the US Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York, Sullivan & Cromwell disclosed on 18 April 2026 that its emergency Chapter 15 motion in In re Prince Global Holdings contained AI-hallucinated citations,…
  • United States v. Cohen, No. 18-CR-602 (JMF) (S.D.N.Y.)2024-03-20 · US District Court, Southern District of New York · OtherIn the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, Judge Jesse M. Furman declined to sanction attorney David M. Schwartz, who filed a motion for Michael Cohen citing three non-existent cases that Cohen had…

Cite this record

SafeLegalAI Global Legal AI Incident Tracker, “Kohls v. Ellison, No. 0:24-cv-03754 (D. Minn.)”, safelegalai.com/tracker/kohls-v-ellison (accessed 2026-09-16). Data: CC BY 4.0.

Report an issue with this record →