From Friday’s order by Justice of the Peace Choose Susan van Keulen in Harmony Music Group, Inc. v. Anthropic PBC (N.D. Cal.)
On the outset, the Court docket notes that throughout the listening to, Publishers requested this Court docket to look at Anthropic’s professional, Ms. Chen and strike her declaration as a result of no less than one of many citations therein appeared to have been an “AI hallucination”: a quotation to an article that didn’t exist and whose purported authors had by no means labored collectively. The Court docket gave Anthropic time to research the circumstances surrounding the challenged quotation. Having thought-about the declaration of Anthropic’s counsel and Publishers’ response, the Court docket finds this concern is a severe one—if not fairly so grave because it at first appeared.
Anthropic’s counsel protests that this was “an sincere quotation mistake” however admits that Claude.ai was used to “correctly format” no less than three citations and, in doing so, generated a fictitious article title with inaccurate authors (who’ve by no means labored collectively) for the quotation at concern. That could be a plain and easy AI hallucination. But the underlying article exists, was correctly linked to and was situated by a human being utilizing Google search; so, this isn’t a case the place “attorneys and consultants [have] abdicate[d] their impartial judgment and important considering abilities in favor of ready-made, AI-generated solutions….”
A remaining severe concern, nonetheless, is Anthropic’s attestation {that a} “guide quotation examine” was carried out however “didn’t catch th[e] error.” It’s not clear how such an error—together with a whole change in article title—might have escaped correction throughout guide cite-check by a human being. Moreover, though the undersigned’s [i.e., the Magistrate Judge’s] standing order doesn’t expressly handle the usage of AI by events or counsel, Part VIII.G of [District] Choose Lee’s Civil Standing Order requires a certification “that lead trial counsel has personally verified the content material’s accuracy.” Neither the certification nor verification has occurred right here. In sum, the Court docket STRIKES-IN-PART Ms. Chen’s declaration, putting paragraph 9 [which contains the footnote that contains the citation with the hallucination], and notes for the document that this concern undermines the general credibility of Ms. Chen’s written declaration, an element within the Court docket’s conclusion.
Because of ChatGPT Is Consuming the World for the pointer; it additionally discusses extra concerning the substantive position of paragraph 9 within the declaration. This is extra backstory (from an earlier submit):
The Declaration filed by a “Knowledge Scientist at Anthropic” in Harmony Music Group, Inc. v. Anthropic PBC consists of this quotation:
However the cited article does not appear to exist at that quotation or at that URL, and Google discovered no different references to any article by that title….
This is the clarification, from one in all Anthropic’s legal professionals (emphasis added):
Our investigation of the matter confirms that this was an sincere quotation mistake and never a fabrication of authority. The primary quotation in footnote 3 of Dkts. 340-3 (sealed) and 341-2 (public) consists of an misguided creator and title, whereas offering an accurate hyperlink to, and accurately figuring out the publication, quantity, web page numbers, and 12 months of publication of, the article referenced by Ms. Chen as a part of the premise for her assertion in paragraph 9. We apologize for the inaccuracy and any confusion this error brought on.
The American Statistician article reviewed and relied upon by Ms. Chen [the Anthropic expert], and accessible on the first hyperlink supplied in footnote 3 of Dkts. 340-3 and 341-2, is titled Binomial Confidence Intervals for Uncommon Occasions: Significance of Defining Margin of Error Relative to Magnitude of Proportion, by Owen McGrath and Kevin Burke. A Latham & Watkins affiliate situated that article as potential extra assist for Ms. Chen’s testimony utilizing a Google search. The article exists and helps Ms. Chen’s testimony in her declaration and on the Could 13, 2025 listening to, which she proffered primarily based on her pre-existing data concerning the suitable relative margin of error for uncommon occasions. A duplicate of the entire article is hooked up as Exhibit A.
Particularly, “within the context of small or rare-event success chances,” the authors “recommend limiting the vary of values to εR ∈ [0.1, 0.5]”—that means, a relative margin of error between 10% to 50%—”as greater values result in imprecision and poor interval protection, whereas decrease values result in pattern sizes which are prone to be impractically giant for a lot of research.” See Exhibit A, at 446. This suggestion is solely in keeping with Ms. Chen’s testimony, which proposes utilizing a 25% relative margin of error primarily based on her experience.
After the Latham & Watkins crew recognized the supply as potential extra assist for Ms. Chen’s testimony, I requested Claude.ai to supply a correctly formatted authorized quotation for that supply utilizing the hyperlink to the proper article. Sadly, though offering the proper publication title, publication 12 months, and hyperlink to the supplied supply, the returned quotation included an inaccurate title and incorrect authors. Our guide quotation examine didn’t catch that error. Our quotation examine additionally missed extra wording errors launched within the citations throughout the formatting course of utilizing Claude.ai. These wording errors are: (1) that the proper title of the supply in footnote 2 of Ms. Chen’s declaration is Computing Needed Pattern Measurement, not, as listed in footnote 2, Pattern Measurement Estimation, and (2) the creator/preparer of the third supply cited in footnote 3 is “Windward Environmental LLC”, not “Decrease Windward Environmental LLC.” Once more, we apologize for these quotation errors.
Ms. Chen, in addition to counsel, reviewed the entire textual content of Ms. Chen’s testimony and in addition reviewed every of the cited references previous to submitting Ms. Chen’s declaration to the Court docket. In reviewing her declaration each previous to submission and in preparation for the listening to on Could 13, 2025, Ms. Chen reviewed the precise article accessible on the first hyperlink in footnote 3 of her declaration and hooked up hereto as Exhibit A, and the article helps the proposition expressed in her declaration with respect to the suitable margin of error.
Throughout the manufacturing and cite-checking course of for Ms. Chen’s declaration, the Latham & Watkins crew reviewing and enhancing the declaration checked that the substance of the cited doc supported the proposition within the declaration, and in addition corrected the quantity and web page numbers within the quotation, however didn’t discover the wrong title and authors, regardless of clicking on the hyperlink supplied within the footnote and reviewing the article. The Latham & Watkins crew additionally didn’t discover the extra wording errors in footnotes 2 and three of Ms. Chen’s declaration, as described above in paragraph 6.
This was an embarrassing and unintentional mistake. The article in query genuinely exists, was reviewed by Ms. Chen and helps her opinion on the right margin of error to make use of for sampling. The insinuation that Ms. Chen’s opinion was influenced by false or fabricated info is thus incorrect. As is the insinuation that Ms. Chen lacks assist for her opinion. Furthermore, the hyperlink supplied each to this Court docket and to Plaintiffs was correct and, when pasted right into a browser, calls up the proper article upon which Ms. Chen had relied. Had Plaintiffs’ counsel raised the quotation concern after they first found it, we might and would have confirmed that the article cited was the one upon which Ms. Chen relied and corrected the quotation mistake.
We have now applied procedures, together with a number of ranges of extra evaluate, to work to make sure that this doesn’t happen once more and have preserved, on the Court docket’s route, all info associated to Ms. Chen’s declaration. I perceive that Anthropic has additionally preserved all info associated to Ms. Chen’s declaration as properly….
