Barrister Criticizes AI Use in Judicial Rulings
Pakistan legal experts challenge the use of AI tools in court decisions that produce fictitious precedents.
Updated on Oct. 23, 2026 in Artificial Intelligence
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Barrister Salahuddin Ahmed has issued a formal critique regarding the use of artificial intelligence by district court judges in Pakistan to draft judicial decisions. These AI-generated rulings have been found to rely on non-existent legal references and precedents, prompting legal professionals to challenge them in appellate courts.
Why it matters
The reliance on AI to draft legal judgments threatens the integrity of the judicial process when automated tools generate fabricated case law. This practice mirrors similar issues identified in the United States, where judges have inadvertently included fictitious citations in rulings.
Drafting a judicial decision manually typically requires 4 to 5 hours of work. AI tools are being used to automate this process, though they have been documented producing errors including non-existent case citations.
The players
Salahuddin Ahmed
He is a barrister based in Karachi who has publicly highlighted the risks of AI in the judicial system.
OpenAI
It is an artificial intelligence research organization that experienced a high-profile departure of safety researcher Jan Leike in 2024.
Anthropic
It is an artificial intelligence safety and research company that saw the resignation of Jacob Coxon in September 2026.
The details
Legal professionals are actively contesting rulings derived from artificial intelligence by bringing these cases to appellate review. The concern centers on the capability of AI models to hallucinate legal authority, effectively presenting fabricated precedents as binding law.
Timeline
Jan Leike resigned from OpenAI in 2024.
A judge used ChatGPT for legal research in September 2026.
Jacob Coxon resigned from Anthropic in September 2026.
The Tech Race
The integration of tools like ChatGPT into judicial workflows marks a departure from traditional legal research methods that prioritize verified human verification. This shift risks replacing legacy research systems with automated processes that lack a foundational understanding of existing legal precedent.
The use of AI in courts may lead to unpredictable legal outcomes for those involved in district court proceedings. Litigants should be aware that judicial decisions in these jurisdictions may now be influenced by automated tools prone to citing non-existent information.
The takeaway
Legal systems must implement rigorous verification protocols to ensure that AI-assisted judgments do not compromise the standard of judicial evidence. Professionals relying on automated drafting should manually audit every cited precedent to prevent the inclusion of hallucinated case law.
Further reading
For more on how automated technologies are evolving, visit the Artificial Intelligence section.
Source note: This article includes information reported by GEO TV.
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