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Lawyers representing MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell were warned by a federal judge this week that they could be referred to for disciplinary action after it was discovered that one of their filings was riddled with artificial intelligence-generated mistakes.
On Wednesday, District Court Judge Nina Wang of Colorado demanded the lawyers, Christopher Kachouroff and Jennifer DeMaster, explain why they had submitted a motion back in February that contained a litany of mistakes that Kachouroff later admitted were caused by using AI.
The filing, submitted in February, is part of an ongoing defamation lawsuit between Eric Coomer, a former employee at Dominion Voting Systems, and Lindell, MyPillow and FrankSpeech (the former name of Lindell’s media corporation).
But weeks later, the court seemed to notice that the filing contained “misrepresentations of principles of law associated with cited cases,” “discussion of legal principles that simply do not appear within such decisions,” “misstatements regarding whether case law originated from a binding authority,” and “most egregiously, citation of cases that do not exist.”
When pressed for answers during a hearing, Kachouroff was unable to explain what happened and was “surprised” that there were various mistakes.
He admitted to the court that he had used AI to assist him in drafting a version of the motion, which he asserts is acceptable “when used properly.”
In court filings on Friday, Kachouroff and DeMaster said they accidentally uploaded the draft version of the motion instead of a final version which had been corrected.
“After the hearing and having a subsequent opportunity to investigate Doc. 283, it was immediately clear that the document filed was not the correct version,” the lawyers explained. “It was a prior draft. It was inadvertent, an erroneous filing that was not done intentionally, and was filed mistakenly through human error.”
Kachouroff and DeMaster, who work at the law firm McSweeney, Cynkar & Kachouroff, provided the final corrected version, the metadata that shows DeMaster corrected the draft and sworn declarations.
In Kachouroff’s sworn declaration he insists he is the “only” member at his law firm that uses AI and he only uses it to “analyze the structure of my outline and the logic of the arguments.” He said he does not “rely” on it.
The Independent has reached out to McSweeney, Cynkar & Kachouroff for comment.
Kachouroff and DeMaster began representing Lindell in the years-long defamation suit in 2023 after Lindell’s original lawyers quit due to unpaid legal fees.
Lindell was sued by Coomer in 2022 for defamation related to false claims of election fraud Lindell made about the 2020 election. Lindell claimed Coomer, the former director of product security and strategy, was a “criminal” and “did crimes against the United States.”
Judge Wang has yet to issue a ruling in the dispute over the AI-generated mistakes in the court filing.
English (US) ·