Court in Cagliari upholds ruling containing fragment of judge’s dialogue with AI — Interia

The Court of Appeal in the Italian city of Cagliari upheld a ruling in a civil case against a company from Sardinia, although a judge in Oristano had mistakenly inserted an excerpt of a dialogue with artificial intelligence into its text. The court concluded that the final decision was made by the judge, not by the algorithm, Interia reports.

The case was heard at first instance by a judge in Oristano who handles minor civil cases. The text of the ruling included a fragment of a response received from a chatbot: the algorithm suggested wording a paragraph in the style of a court ruling in line with the selected approach.

Chatbot response fragment in the ruling

The lawyers for the company against which the ruling was issued filed an appeal. They alleged improper use of artificial intelligence during the consideration of the case and pointed to the copying of a dialogue fragment into the court document.

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Position of the Court of Appeal

The court in Cagliari stated that the mere presence in the ruling of traces of interaction between the judge and the chatbot does not prove that the functions of interpreting the law, assessing evidence, or making the final decision were delegated to the algorithm. According to the court’s conclusion, AI’s role in this case was secondary.

The reasoning also emphasized that artificial intelligence may be an auxiliary tool, but it cannot be entrusted with powers that the law reserves exclusively for the judge. According to Interia, a 2025 law permits the use of AI in the judicial sphere only for preparatory actions.

The company’s representatives appealed the Court of Appeal’s decision to Italy’s Supreme Court. They plan to argue that the first-instance judge made a serious error by inserting part of the correspondence with the algorithm into the ruling.