The lawyer, Ivana Dukanovic, an associate at Latham & Watkins, stated in a court filing that Claude made a citation error by listing the wrong title and author for an article used in the case. However, she noted that the publication, link, year, and content of the article were correct.
Lawyer defending Anthropic in court acknowledged using an incorrect citation generated by Claude. The error was addressed by UMG’s lawyers during the ongoing music copyright case in Northern California. Dukanovic described the situation as an “embarrassing and unintentional mistake.”
“Our investigation of the matter confirms that this was an honest citation mistake and not a fabrication of authority,” states the document. “We apologize for the inaccuracy and any confusion this error caused.” According to Reuters, Dukanovic’s explanation comes after UMG’s lawyers said data scientist Olivia Chen used AI-fabricated sources to defend Anthropic in the case. Dukanovic explained that Chen used the correct article from the journal American Statistician but that lawyers at Latham & Watkins added the incorrect footnote provided by Claude: Dukanovic described the situation as an “embarrassing and unintentional mistake” and assured that they have implemented new measures to ensure it doesn’t happen again. A few weeks ago, during an early stage of the case, the jury had ruled in favor of Anthropic and considered UMG’s requests too broad. This new situation could jeopardize Anthropic’s advantage in the case. In the past few months, multiple lawyers have presented incorrect AI-generated documents in court in the United States, raising concerns and legal problems. This week, a judge fined two law firms $31,000 for fake AI-generated legal citations.
