“Here you have point IV re-edited, without citations and ready to copy and paste”

The case had generated a strong debate in the judicial world because the Esquel Criminal Chamber had detected in the text of the ruling a typical phrase of automatic writing assistants. Based on that finding, the court declared ex officio the annulment of the entire sentence and ordered a new trial.

The resolution was considered one of the first in the country to invalidate a criminal conviction for the use of artificial intelligence in the drafting of a judicial resolution, which opened a discussion about the limits of the use of these tools in courts.

Now, The highest provincial court established a different criterion: argued that the criminal process does not control the methods that a judge uses to develop his reasoning, but rather the final content of the sentence and the solidity of its foundations.

The case originated in November 2023 in Esquel, when a man was accused of simple robbery. Criminal judge Carlos Rogelio Richeri sentenced him in 2024 to two years and six months in prison for effective compliance.

When the defense appealed the sentence, the Esquel Criminal Chamber reviewed the ruling and found a striking phrase in the text: “Here you have point IV re-edited, without citations and ready to copy and paste.”

For the chambermaids, that line was a clear sign that the magistrate had used a generative artificial intelligence tool to write a key part of the ruling, in particular the chapter where nullities raised by the defense regarding two central pieces of evidence in the case were analyzed.

With this argument, the court declared ex officio the annulment of the sentence and He ordered a new trial with another judge.

The Superior Court of Justice of Chubut now took the opposite position. When resolving a complaint filed by the prosecutors in the case, the highest provincial court revoked the nullity and established a criterion on the use of artificial intelligence in the preparation of sentences.

According to the ruling, The criminal procedure system does not control how a judge thinks or what tools he uses to develop his reasoning.but what is finally reflected in the sentence. Judicial deliberation, including consultation of doctrine or the use of technological tools, is part of the magistrate’s private intellectual process.

For a sentence to be annulled, the ministers pointed out, specific harm must be demonstratedsuch as an infringement of the right of defense or a defective foundation. In this case, they considered that the presence of a phrase associated with an artificial intelligence tool does not in itself prove that the judge has delegated his decision-making function.

The court also highlighted that artificial intelligence can be used as a support tool, but never as an autonomous source of decision. Responsibility for the content of the ruling, he stressed, always falls on the magistrate who signs it.

With this resolution, the Superior Court returned the file to the Esquel Criminal Chamber to re-analyze the defense’s appeal, but with a different integration than that which had dictated the annulment.

The court must now review the original proposals of the appeal, which questioned the evaluation of the evidence in the case, including images from security cameras and a criminalistic expertise, and the sentence imposed.

The Superior’s ruling, signed on March 13 by five of its six ministers, also established a binding criterion for that court in the treatment of the case.

The use of generative AI tools is a global case study, as many office jobs are at risk for many specialists. Errors in law are not new either: at a global level, the first and best-known case of all had its ruling on June 22, 2023, in the United States, when a lawyer filed a lawsuit against the Colombian airline Avianca and cited jurisprudence that did not exist.precisely by using ChatGPT.

Today, there is even a website that collects cases from all over the world.