Ex-Trump lawyer Michael Cohen admits to using AI chatbot in embarrassing legal fail

New York, New York - Donald Trump's ex-attorney Michael Cohen used Google’s Bard AI to generate bogus legal filings in a bid to end his court-mandated supervised release, his lawyer admitted in a federal court filing Thursday.

Donald Trump's ex-lawyer admitted to using Google's AI chatbot to beef up legal filings in an attempt to end his supervised release.
Donald Trump's ex-lawyer admitted to using Google's AI chatbot to beef up legal filings in an attempt to end his supervised release.  © Collage: Lionel BONAVENTURE / AFP & SPENCER PLATT / GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA / Getty Images via AFP

Cohen is currently on supervised release after serving half of a three-year sentence following his 2018 guilty plea for arranging hush money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels during Trump’s 2016 presidential run. The case led to the ex-president's first of four indictments.

Cohen’s attorney Danya Perry wrote that her client thought Google Bard was a souped-up search engine and not a Chat GPT-like artificial intelligence tool when he used the service to generate three phony decisions to support his argument for the court terminating his post-release supervision, according to attorney Danya Perry.

"This is a simple story of a client making a well-intentioned but poorly-informed suggestion," Perry wrote in Thursday’s letter to Judge Jesse M. Furman.

Trump gets temporary reprieve from courthouse grind as he heads to Wisconsin
Donald Trump Trump gets temporary reprieve from courthouse grind as he heads to Wisconsin

Cohen’s lawyers filed the motion asking Furman to relieve their client of their court’s supervision in November, but the eagle-eyed judge found notable inconsistencies in the three decisions cited as support for their argument.

One was an excerpt taken from a Fourth Circuit decision that had nothing to do with supervised release, while another quoted from a decision by the Board of Veterans’ Appeals, an administrative tribunal that does not rule on criminal matters, the judge wrote.

The third case, according to Furman’s order, "appears to correspond to nothing at all."

Perry said that Cohen believed the decisions were legitimate when he handed them to attorney David Schwartz, who she blamed for failing to vet Cohen’s research before bundling it with the November filing.

Cover photo: Collage: Lionel BONAVENTURE / AFP & SPENCER PLATT / GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA / Getty Images via AFP

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