The advent of AI has already made a splash in the legal world, to say the least.
In the past few months, we’ve watched as a tech entrepreneur gave testimony through an AI avatar, trial lawyers filed a massive brief riddled with AI hallucinations, and the MyPillow guy tried to exonerate himself in front of a federal judge with ChatGPT.
By now, it ought to be a well-known fact that AI is an unreliable source of info for just about anything, let alone for something as intricate as a legal filing. One Stanford University study found that AI tools make up information on 58 to 82 percent of legal queries — an astonishing amount, in other words.
That’s evidently something AI company Anthropic wasn’t aware of, because they were just caught using AI as part of its defense against allegations that the company trained its software on copywritten music.
Earlier this week, a federal judge in California raged that Anthropic had filed a brief containing a major “hallucination,” the term describing AI’s knack for making up information that doesn’t actually exist.
Per Reuters, those music publishers filing suit against the AI company argued that Anthropic cited a “nonexistent academic article” in a filing in order to lend credibility to Anthropic’s case. The judge demanded answers, and Anthropic’s was mind numbing.
Rather than deny the fact that the AI produced a hallucination, defense attorneys doubled down. They admitted to using Anthropic’s own AI chatbot Claude to write their legal filing. Anthropic Defense Attorney Ivana Dukanovic claims that, while the source Claude cited started off as genuine, its formatting became lost in translation — which is why the article’s title and authors led to an article that didn’t exist.
As far as Anthropic is concerned, according to The Verge, Claude simply made an “honest citation mistake, and not a fabrication of authority.”
“I asked Claude.ai to provide a properly formatted legal citation for that source using the link to the correct article,” Dukanovic confessed. “Unfortunately, although providing the correct publication title, publication year, and link to the provided source, the returned citation included an inaccurate title and incorrect authors. Our manual citation check did not catch that error.”
Anthropic apologized for the flagrant error, saying it was “an embarrassing and unintentional mistake.”
Whatever someone wants to call it, one thing it clearly is not: A great sales pitch for Claude.
It’d be fair to assume that Anthropic, of all companies, would have a better internal process in place for scrutinizing the work of its in-house AI system — especially before it’s in the hands of a judge overseeing a landmark copyright case.
As it stands, Claude is joining the ranks of infamous courtroom gaffs committed by the likes of OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini — further evidence that no existing AI model has what it takes to go up in front of a judge.
More on AI: Judge Blasts Law Firm for Using ChatGPT to Estimate Legal Costs
The post Anthropic Tried to Defend Itself With AI and It Backfired Horribly appeared first on Futurism.
Foo Fighters have parted ways with drummer Josh Freese, who has filled that role since 2023 in the wake of band member Taylor Hawkins’ sudden death in March 2022. Freese revealed the surprising news in a social media post, which Foo Fighters themselves have yet to address in any form. A band spokesperson also declined comment.
“The Foo Fighters called me Monday night to let me know they’ve decided ‘to go in a different direction with their drummer.’ No reason was given,” Freese wrote. “Regardless, I enjoyed the past two years with them, both on and off stage, and I support whatever they feel is best for the band. In my 40 years of drumming professionally, I’ve never been let go from a band, so while I’m not angry — just a bit shocked and disappointed. But as most of you know I’ve always worked freelance and bounced between bands, so I’m fine. Stay tuned for my ‘Top 10 Possible Reasons Josh Got Booted From The Foo Fighters’ list.”
More from Spin:
Freese, 52, is one of the most respected session drummers in rock and is a longtime friend of Dave Grohl and the Foos camp. Before a formal announcement that he was coming on board, he joined the Foos on drums during star-studded Hawkins tribute concerts in 2022 at London’s Wembley Stadium and Los Angeles’ Kia Forum.
Freese has played drums in the Vandals since 1989 and has performed for long stretches with everyone from Devo, Guns N’ Roses, Nine Inch Nails and the Replacements to Sting, Sublime With Rome, Weezer, A Perfect Circle, the Offspring, Danny Elfman and Paramore. He’s currently back on the road with A Perfect Circle for the first time in 13 years.
Meanwhile, the Foos earlier this week announced their first show of 2025 on Oct. 4 at the Singapore Grand Prix. The group canceled a number of concerts last year following the revelation that Grohl had fathered a child with a woman other than his wife.
This is a developing story.
To see our running list of the top 100 greatest rock stars of all time, click here.