Incident Tracker

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

other

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'.

Date of decision/order

2025-01-10

Court

US District Court, District of Minnesota

Jurisdiction

US-FEDERAL

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.

Consequence

See outcome