Meta’s A.I. Assistant Is Fun to Use, but It Can’t Be Trusted; The New York Times, April 24, 2024

Brian X. Chen, The New York Times ; Meta’s A.I. Assistant Is Fun to Use, but It Can’t Be Trusted

"“We believe Meta AI is now the most intelligent AI assistant that you can freely use,” Mark Zuckerberg, the company’s chief executive, wrote on Instagram on Thursday.

The new bot invites you to “ask Meta AI anything” — but my advice, after testing it for six days, is to approach it with caution. It makes lots of mistakes when you treat it as a search engine. For now, you can have some fun: Its image generator can be a clever way to express yourself when chatting with friends.

A Meta spokeswoman said that because the technology was new, it might not always return accurate responses, similar to other A.I. systems. There is currently no way to turn off Meta AI inside the apps.

Here’s what doesn’t work well — and what does — in Meta’s AI."

Google CEO Pichai says Gemini's AI image results "offended our users"; NPR, February 28, 2024

Bobby Allyn , NPR; Google CEO Pichai says Gemini's AI image results "offended our users"

"Gemini, which was previously named Bard, is also an AI chatbot, similar to OpenAI's hit service ChatGPT. 

The text-generating capabilities of Gemini also came under scrutiny after several outlandish responses went viral online...

In his note to employees at Google, Pichai wrote that when Gemini is re-released to the public, he hopes the service is in better shape. 

"No AI is perfect, especially at this emerging stage of the industry's development, but we know the bar is high for us and we will keep at it for however long it takes," Pichai wrote."

Michael Cohen used fake cases created by AI in bid to end his probation; The Washington Post, December 29, 2023

 Pranshu Verma, The Washington Post; Michael Cohen used fake cases created by AI in bid to end his probation

"Michael Cohen, a former fixer and lawyer for former president Donald Trump, said in a new court filing that he unknowingly gave his attorney bogus case citations after using artificial intelligence to create them as part of a legal bid to end his probation on tax evasion and campaign finance violation charges...

In the filing, Cohen wrote that he had not kept up with “emerging trends (and related risks) in legal technology and did not realize that Google Bard was a generative text service that, like ChatGPT, could show citations and descriptions that looked real but actually were not.” To him, he said, Google Bard seemed to be a “supercharged search engine.”...

This is at least the second instance this year in which a Manhattan federal judge has confronted lawyers over using fake AI-generated citations. Two lawyers in June were fined $5,000 in an unrelated case where they used ChatGPT to create bogus case citations."

AI chatbot can pass national lawyer ethics exam; Reuters, November 16, 2023

Karen Sloan, Reuters ; AI chatbot can pass national lawyer ethics exam

"Popular AI chatbot GPT-4 outperforms most aspiring lawyers on the legal ethics exam required by nearly every state in order to practice law, a new study has found.

GPT-4 answered 74% of the questions correctly on a simulated Multistate Professional Responsibility Exam (MPRE), compared with an estimated 68% average among human test takers nationwide, according to a report released on Thursday by LegalOn Technologies — which sells AI software that reviews contracts...

A spokesperson for the National Conference of Bar Examiners, which develops the MPRE, said that it could not assess the LegalOn report's claims that GPT-4 can pass its ethics test.

"The legal profession is always evolving in its use of technology, and will continue to do so," said National Conference spokesperson Sophie Martin. She added that "attorneys have a unique set of skills that AI cannot currently match."...

“This research demonstrates for the first time that top-performing generative AI models can apply black-letter ethical rules as effectively as aspiring lawyers,” the study reads."

Ethical considerations in the use of AI; Reuters, October 2, 2023

 Brad Hise and Jenny Dao, Hanson Bridgett LLP, Reuters; Ethical considerations in the use of AI

"The burgeoning use of artificial intelligence ("AI") platforms and tools such as ChatGPT creates both opportunities and risks for the practice of law. In particular, the use of AI in research, document drafting and other work product presents a number of ethical issues for lawyers to consider as they contemplate how the use of AI may benefit their practices. In California, as in other states, several ethics rules are particularly relevant to a discussion of the use of AI."

Local universities prepared to teach ethics of using generative AI; Rochester Business Journal, August 15, 2023

 Caurie Putnam, Rochester Business Journal; Local universities prepared to teach ethics of using generative AI

"How are local schools handling these platforms that have the potential to produce human-like AI-generated content like essays based on the input of the user? You may be surprised."

Google hit with class-action lawsuit over AI data scraping; Reuters, July 11, 2023

 Blake Brittain, Reuters ; Google hit with class-action lawsuit over AI data scraping

"Alphabet's Google (GOOGL.O) was accused in a proposed class action lawsuit on Tuesday of misusing vast amounts of personal information and copyrighted material to train its artificial intelligence systems.

The complaint, filed in San Francisco federal court by eight individuals seeking to represent millions of internet users and copyright holders, said Google's unauthorized scraping of data from websites violated their privacy and property rights."

Alarmed by A.I. Chatbots, Universities Start Revamping How They Teach; The New York Times, January 16, 2023

Kalley Huang, The New York Times ; Alarmed by A.I. Chatbots, Universities Start Revamping How They Teach

"In higher education, colleges and universities have been reluctant to ban the A.I. tool because administrators doubt the move would be effective and they don’t want to infringe on academic freedom. That means the way people teach is changing instead."