(MENAFN) A Beijing court has formally reprimanded a lawyer for citing fictitious legal cases generated by artificial intelligence during a commercial dispute, Chinese media reported on Friday.

Judge Zheng Jizhe of the Beijing Tongzhou District People’s Court uncovered that two case citations presented by the plaintiff’s attorney had been fabricated using AI technology.

The references — one purportedly from the Supreme People’s Court and another listed as (2022) Hu 01 Min Zhong No. 12345 from the Shanghai No. 1 Intermediate People’s Court — initially appeared authentic, with credible facts and legal reasoning. However, upon review, court officials confirmed that no such cases existed in official records.

When questioned, the lawyer conceded that the “reference cases” were created by an AI model. He admitted to entering case information into a large language model and copying its generated responses directly into his legal filing.

Chen Hangping, a law professor at Tsinghua University, explained that the incident exemplifies AI “hallucination,” describing it as false or misleading information produced by AI systems that may appear convincing.

The court dismissed the fabricated citations and issued a formal warning in its written judgment, emphasizing that “fabricated information produced by AI must not be allowed to disrupt judicial order.”

A similar incident recently occurred in eastern China, where a local judge discovered an AI-written lawsuit containing fake white papers and incorrect case numbers.

Meanwhile, China’s top legislature revised the Cybersecurity Law earlier this week to tighten oversight, ethical guidelines, and risk controls surrounding AI development and deployment.

Although such cases highlight the dangers of unverified AI use in legal work, experts note that judicial systems worldwide continue to explore responsible ways to integrate AI assistance into their proceedings.

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