New Mexico fines lawyer $5K for AI witnesses

New Mexico’s Supreme Court fined lawyer Stephen Aarons $5,000 after his ChatGPT-assisted murder-appeal brief invented witnesses and police testimony, according to The Verge’s account of the court filing. The court held him in contempt for failing to verify claims; Aarons told Reuters he thought ChatGPT would produce a “bulletproof summary.” Legal teams should treat generated citations and evidence as untrusted inputs, a boundary already visible in the archive’s case for pre-deployment AI accountability.