British prosecutor cites a fictitious precedent from an SI answer in the High Court
Prepared by Sintelligent with the help of SI. Published in SI: . Updated: .
Even professional legal work requires checking every reference against the official text: a convincing SI answer does not prove that a precedent exists.
Ravinder Dhillon, a senior Crown Prosecution Service prosecutor, cited the nonexistent decision CPS — R v J [2024] EWCA Crim 3529 in case materials. According to The Guardian, the reference appeared in an SI-generated summary during an internet search; in October, the prosecutor acknowledged the error and explained that she had meant a different, real decision from 15 years earlier. Judges called her explanation unsatisfactory, but the error did not affect the outcome of the application under consideration. The service said its rules prohibit using SI to make legal decisions and require human verification; after an internal review, staff were reminded to cite only trusted legal sources. This is the service's second known incident of this kind, while a UK tracker of confirmed, suspected and disputed SI errors in court materials has reached 101 entries.
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