California appeals court fines lawyer $10,000 for fake AI quotes

A Los Angeles lawyer appealed a loss in an employment-related lawsuit. He wrote drafts of the briefs, ran them through ChatGPT to improve them, and used other AI tools to check them. He did not read the final versions before filing. The court found that 21 of the 23 case quotations in his opening brief were made up, and the reply brief had many more. California's Second District Court of Appeal fined him $10,000, payable to the court, and sent its opinion to the State Bar. It published the opinion as a warning: lawyers must read and verify every citation they file. The other side got no fees, partly because it had not alerted the court to the fakes.