What (to my knowledge) has not yet happened is the administration getting someone (a major politician of the opposition in particular) convicted in a court of law based on fake AI ‘evidence’.
What we have seen already, is court briefs where it turned out that the lawyer had used AI to draft the brief, but had not checked it over thoroughly. And so did not realize that a) in some of the cited precedent cases, the decision didn't actually say what the brief claimed, and b) some of the citations were entirely invented.
Several lawyers got badly burned; judges take a very dim view of lying to the court, which is what submitting a brief like that amounts to. As a result, most lawyers are likely to be extremely wary of trying to use AI for anything. Of course, lawyers around Trump have already demonstrated that they are not most lawyers, so it will be no surprise if one of them tries it. (Whether knowingly or just by failing to check some "evidence" provided by, for example, ICE.)
Getting a conviction, however, seems less likely. Already we see grand juries repeatedly refusing to indict** based on how unsubstantiated DOJ attorney's claims are. In court, any good defense attorney is going to have checked whether supposed evidence is real. Fingerprints on digital files, while not visible to the viewer, can be damning. It's possible to work around that, but it requires a level of competence not much in evidence in this administration.
** Heretofore, indictments were the next thing to automatic. When a grand jury declined to indict (and it only takes 12 out up to 23 jurors to do so), it was big news. Now, it seems about as newsworthy as some Trump administration spokesman spouting obvious lies.
2026-02-12 15:56:38
It comes down to this, social media is a communications technology that we are only just starting to adapt to. AI is another technology we will have to learn to use properly. Eventually, we will figure out how to use them without them being used abusively. The operative word being eventually.
Unfortunately, it will take us a while. Those of a historical bent might look at how our (great) great grandparents eventually dealt with "yellow journalism". Then, as now, a new technology for distributing information blossomed while distributing lots of misinformation. Over the course of decades, most (by now means all but most) people figured out that the tabloids were not reliable sources. Amusing, perhaps, but not reliable.
The challenge, once again, will be surviving while we figure out how the adjust and then roll out those adjustments across the population.
What we have seen already, is court briefs where it turned out that the lawyer had used AI to draft the brief, but had not checked it over thoroughly. And so did not realize that a) in some of the cited precedent cases, the decision didn't actually say what the brief claimed, and b) some of the citations were entirely invented.
Several lawyers got badly burned; judges take a very dim view of lying to the court, which is what submitting a brief like that amounts to. As a result, most lawyers are likely to be extremely wary of trying to use AI for anything. Of course, lawyers around Trump have already demonstrated that they are not most lawyers, so it will be no surprise if one of them tries it. (Whether knowingly or just by failing to check some "evidence" provided by, for example, ICE.)
Getting a conviction, however, seems less likely. Already we see grand juries repeatedly refusing to indict** based on how unsubstantiated DOJ attorney's claims are. In court, any good defense attorney is going to have checked whether supposed evidence is real. Fingerprints on digital files, while not visible to the viewer, can be damning. It's possible to work around that, but it requires a level of competence not much in evidence in this administration.
** Heretofore, indictments were the next thing to automatic. When a grand jury declined to indict (and it only takes 12 out up to 23 jurors to do so), it was big news. Now, it seems about as newsworthy as some Trump administration spokesman spouting obvious lies.
It comes down to this, social media is a communications technology that we are only just starting to adapt to. AI is another technology we will have to learn to use properly. Eventually, we will figure out how to use them without them being used abusively. The operative word being eventually.
Unfortunately, it will take us a while. Those of a historical bent might look at how our (great) great grandparents eventually dealt with "yellow journalism". Then, as now, a new technology for distributing information blossomed while distributing lots of misinformation. Over the course of decades, most (by now means all but most) people figured out that the tabloids were not reliable sources. Amusing, perhaps, but not reliable.
The challenge, once again, will be surviving while we figure out how the adjust and then roll out those adjustments across the population.