Israel Police submitted claims to a court that cited clauses from laws written by ChatGPT and sourced from artificial intelligence, which don’t exist in the real legal realm.
Judge Ehud Kaplan from the Hadera Magistrate's Court criticized the police’s conduct last week, in quotes that were published on Tuesday.
This took place in the context of a request by Ibrahim Mahajne to retrieve his cell phone after it was confiscated by police. “This law doesn’t exist anywhere in the State of Israel – it also doesn’t exist on any other imaginative plane,” Kaplan said. “If you search for it, you won’t find it... The law was created by AI.
“If I thought I’d seen it all in my 30 years on the bench, I was apparently mistaken.”
The incident occurred during an investigation by Lahav 433 National Crime Unit and Israel Police. Mahajne was one of several suspects, and his cell phone was confiscated.
Ynet noted that initially, the police were set to keep his cell phone until 2026, but about two months later, Mahajne put in the request to have it returned to him. He said that his shop had been ransacked, and the only way for him to access the security system was through his phone.
Police agreed initially, but then retracted, the report said. Mahajne’s lawyers then approached the Hadera Magistrate’s Court with a request to have the cell phone released. Police, in response, submitted a series of claims arguing for the court to ignore their request.
'Doesn't exist in anyone's imagination'
In this document, the police sourced two clauses as support for its case. When the hearing began on Tuesday, one of Mahajne's lawyers voiced his concern that part of the police's response was taken from ChatGPT.
The police representative admitted to the mistake. “What was sourced is incorrect. The person who wrote it made an honest mistake; we are admitting an error,” said the representative.
After rebuking the police and expressing his shock, Kaplan ruled that Mahajne will provide to police a clean, new cell phone, which police will transfer the data to from his old phone. This way, the original phone will remain in police hands, but all the content will be accessible by Mahajne.
It should be noted that the police representative noted the error already at the beginning of the discussion.
Kaplan said, “If the police knew about it, they should have announced it as such before, in order to avoid being even more humiliated than they already are.”
Israel Police said that this incident did not follow protocol, and that an investigation would proceed to ensure it doesn’t happen again in the future.