Description: Self-represented litigant Adriaan Johannes Roux relied on a nonexistent judgment in High Court submissions in Johannesburg, South Africa. The court attributed the false authority and unsound legal arguments to his admitted AI use and said addressing the material wasted court time and resources. The specific AI tools were not identified.
Editor Notes: 10/08/2025: The High Court heard the application. 01/29/2026: The court delivered its judgment, identifying AI-related false authority and wasted judicial resources; it dismissed the main application with punitive costs for broader litigation conduct. 06/07/2026: ENS published legal commentary on the case. The incident date uses the judgment date as a fallback because the defective filing date is unestablished.
Entities
View all entitiesAlleged: Large language model developers and AI-assisted legal drafting system developers developed an AI system deployed by Pro se litigants and Adriaan Johannes Roux, which harmed Parties to legal proceedings , Judicial integrity , High Court of South Africa, Gauteng Division, Johannesburg , High Court of South Africa , Epistemic integrity and Courts.
Alleged implicated AI systems: Large language models and AI-assisted legal drafting systems
Incident Stats
Incident ID
1773
Report Count
2
Incident Date
2026-01-29
Editors
Daniel Atherton
Incident Reports
Reports Timeline
![Roux v Greunen and Others (2025/81170) [2026] ZAGPJHC 55 (29 January 2026)](https://res.cloudinary.com/pai/image/upload/f_auto/q_auto/c_fill,h_640/v1/legacy/placeholder)
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![Roux v Greunen and Others (2025/81170) [2026] ZAGPJHC 55 (29 January 2026)](https://res.cloudinary.com/pai/image/upload/f_auto/q_auto/c_fill,h_480/v1/legacy/d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e)
S. Yacoob, High Court of South Africa post-incident response
AIID editor's note: This judgment has been abridged to fit AIID's 50,000-character limit. Paragraphs 54-118 and 134-146, headings pertaining solely to those passages, and footnotes 6-17 have been omitted. Omissions are marked; the remainin…
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Artificial intelligence ("AI") is rapidly reshaping legal practice. Lawyers are increasingly using AI tools for drafting, research assistance, document review, summarisation and litigation preparation. As adoption grows, South African court…
Variants
A "variant" is an AI incident similar to a known case—it has the same causes, harms, and AI system. Instead of listing it separately, we group it under the first reported incident. Unlike other incidents, variants do not need to have been reported outside the AIID. Learn more from the research paper.
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