Sullivan & Cromwell, one of the most prestigious law firms in the world, was forced to apologize after submitting a court filing that contained fake citations generated by artificial intelligence. The firm’s lawyers acknowledged that AI “hallucinations” — a well-documented tendency of large language models to fabricate plausible-sounding but entirely fictitious information — had introduced errors into their legal work.
The incident is the latest in a growing string of cases where AI-generated content has undermined the integrity of legal proceedings, raising urgent questions about the guardrails law firms need before integrating AI tools into their workflows.
