ChatGPT OpenAI’s chatbot, has the world buzzing about how artificial intelligence is going to completely change the workplace. ChatGPT is a natural language processing tool powered by AI technology to follow an instruction in a prompt and provide a detailed response. It uses a statistical model based on probability to guess the next word, sentence and paragraph to match the content provided by the user.
It is safe to say that ChatGPT and AI as a whole has captured the imagination of professional services. The legal world is considering where ChatGPT fits into legal services, if at all, and how much time we ought to be giving to learning is processes.
While ChatGPT is still in its research phase, legal professions are naturally asking how ChatGPT can help lawyers. With the right prompts, ChatGPT is capable of creating legal marketing plans and content and basic drafting of legal documents. It may be used for e-discovery, i.e., looking for keywords in data and documents, eliminating duplicates, stringing together emails and predictive coding which may be useful when dealing with copious amounts of data.
AI has the potential to be a really useful research tool but at the moment there are significant risks that the information is incorrect. A Law Points article warns that ChatGPT “will fabricate facts and sources where it does not have access to sufficient data.” Given it only has information up to September 2021, the risk in inaccuracy beyond this point is increased. It lacks the nuance necessary to consistently give accurate responses, let alone create complex legal arguments. Additionally, the ethical obligations of a lawyer will take precedence over convenience of answer.
Terms of use for OpenAI confirm that users have the right to reproduce text generated by ChatGPT during ‘conversations.’ But publishing this content may have legal implications such as copyright infringement. Users should be aware of such implications and use ChatGPT as a source of inspiration at most.
ChatGPT can assist lawyers in various tasks, but cannot provide the same level of empathy, judgement, and creativity that people can. While there is scope for ChatGPT to be used in law firms to complement the work of lawyers, allowing them to operate more effectively and efficiently, relying on ChatGPT for all of the answers will only lead to imperfect and problematic document creation and advice.
Disclaimer: This article was written by one of our legal staff.
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