“Strange expressions, careless Portuguese and quotations from non-existent articles in the law” – three judges are under suspicion of having written a ruling with the help of artificial intelligence, in the process that brought former PSD leader Helena Lopes da Costa to trial.
The judges of the Lisbon Court of Appeal, Alfredo Costa, Hermengarda do Valle-Frias and Margarida Ramos de Almeida, are under suspicion of having written a judgment with the help of artificial intelligence.
It was found that the three judges used strange expressions, careless Portuguese and quotations from non-existent articles in the law.
The complaint was made by the lawyers of Helena Lopes da Costa who requested the annulment of the trial, in a process that, in addition to the former PSD leader, involved Santa Casa da Misericórdia de Lisboa and the socialist, on suspicion of economic participation in business and abuse of power.
As reported by , after, in February, the investigating judge decided not to put the former party leaders on trial, on October 23, the Lisbon Court of Appeal reversed the decision, in a ruling reviewed by judge Alfredo Costa, who “follows the previous spelling”.
In the part reserved for the analysis of the specific case, for example, the judges do not detail the conduct of the defendants once, limiting themselves to making generic considerations about the crimes in question.
Rui Patrício and Catarina Martins Morão, lawyers for Helena Lopes da Costa, came forward with requests for the ruling to be null and void, saying they had never seen a “text presented as a ruling cite articles that don’t existnever even existed” and even making allusions to jurisprudence “which does not exist”.
Quoted by the CM, both lawyers consider that, “to the eye of an average observer, the document has several similarities with a text generated by artificial intelligence or some other tool of a computer or digital nature”, such as the ChatGPT.
Both defenders were still surprised by the use of expressions such as – “criminal doctrine”, “Portuguese Penal Code”, “jurisprudence of the Supreme Court of Justice” – unusual in the texts of judicial decisions.
