Artificial Intelligence (AI) has burst into many professions and is changing the way people work. Aware that this tool can modify the activity of the courts, the Plenary Session of the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ) approved an instruction on its use in January, in which it warned judges that AI cannot dictate sentences, assess facts or evidence, or apply the law without the supervision and “constant, real, conscious, and effective human control” of the magistrates.
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But not all judges have followed that instruction. The head of a Provincial Court, whose name has not been released, issued a sentence using Chat GPT. He did so without notifying his colleagues and without deleting the queries he had made. Furthermore, he did not protect the personal data contained in the case.
The General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ) opened a disciplinary file against him, considering that he had evaded his “jurisdictional functions” by leaving the task of dictating a sentence in the hands of the Chat. And today, the Disciplinary Commission of the CGPJ has agreed by majority to sanction this judge with a fine of one thousand euros.
He is considered the author of a “serious offense” provided for in article 418.8 of the Organic Law of the Judiciary (LOPJ), which is established for the judge or magistrate who reveals “outside the established channels of judicial information, facts or data of which they become aware in the exercise of their function or on the occasion thereof.”
However, the judge has come off lightly, because the instructor of the disciplinary procedure planned for him to be suspended for 15 days from the exercise of his functions as the author of a very serious offense provided for in article 417.14 LOPJ, which regulates “inexcusable ignorance in the fulfillment of judicial duties.” However, the Disciplinary Commission has dismissed that sanction, considering that the judge “used AI as an aid and complement, but not as a substitute for his judicial functions.”
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