Nov 19, 2025Confirmed
Oklahoma judge reportedly used ChatGPT and cited nonexistent cases in a family-law order
AI loose in the worldMisinformationDERIVED
Approved by person, Oct 11, 2026. How entries are approved
Stephens County, Oklahoma, Associate District Judge Lawrence Wheeler reportedly used ChatGPT for legal research on a family-law order that cited at least two nonexistent cases. The order denied a psychological evaluation request and reprimanded the attorney. Wheeler later vacated it after a challenge before the Oklahoma Supreme Court.
What this means for youAI chatbots can invent sources that look real, and those errors can reach official court decisions. If you rely on a chatbot for anything important, check every cited source yourself.
Sources
- AI Incident Databasehttps://incidentdatabase.ai/cite/1724
Data from the AI Incident Database (incidentdatabase.ai), licensed CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/). McGregor, S. (2021) Preventing Repeated Real World AI Failures by Cataloging Incidents: The AI Incident Database. IAAI-21.
Source data license: CC BY-SA 4.0 (database). Report contents keep their own rights; reports.text, submissions, images and videos are excluded from the data license.
Covered by snapshot 45
da93f03b406f409940d0a6ef47b526607f82ebf457d98f69299b88aceede576a
This entry is record number 2310. It has not been edited since it was approved; the hash above would not match if it had. How to verify