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AI: Not all bad?

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Rather than automatically discrediting AI-generated content, the sector—including the judiciary—needs better AI literacy, argues Dr Alan Ma
  • Recent judgments have signalled a growing need for clearer ethical guidance, practitioner safeguards and judicial consistency in handling AI-generated materials.
  • The article challenges emerging judicial tendencies to discount or discredit AI-generated content without evidentiary justification, warning of the risks of procedural unfairness and anti-innovation bias.
  • It proposes practical steps to help legal professionals adapt responsibly.

Generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools such as ChatGPT are increasingly being used to assist with legal drafting, research, and summary writing. As access to such tools has widened, so too has the potential for unintended misuse, particularly where lawyers, litigants or tribunal users submit AI-generated content that contains inaccuracies, fabricated case law, or stylistic features that draw suspicion.

Recent decisions in England, Wales and Ireland reveal how courts and tribunals are beginning to respond to this development. This article explores seven illustrative cases, drawing attention to outright misuse but also to a

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NEWS
The proposed £11bn redress scheme following the Supreme Court’s motor finance rulings is analysed in this week’s NLJ by Fred Philpott of Gough Square Chambers
In this week's issue, Stephen Gold, NLJ columnist and former district judge, surveys another eclectic fortnight in procedure. With humour and humanity, he reminds readers that beneath the procedural dust, the law still changes lives
Generative AI isn’t the villain of the courtroom—it’s the misunderstanding of it that’s dangerous, argues Dr Alan Ma of Birmingham City University and the Birmingham Law Society in this week's NLJ
James Naylor of Naylor Solicitors dissects the government’s plan to outlaw upward-only rent review (UORR) clauses in new commercial leases under Schedule 31 of the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill, in this week's NLJ. The reform, he explains, marks a seismic shift in landlord-tenant power dynamics: rents will no longer rise inexorably, and tenants gain statutory caps and procedural rights
Writing in NLJ this week, James Harrison and Jenna Coad of Penningtons Manches Cooper chart the Privy Council’s demolition of the long-standing ‘shareholder rule’ in Jardine Strategic v Oasis Investments
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