Associated Incidents
The Criminal Court of Esquel overturned a conviction for simple theft after discovering that the judge used generative artificial intelligence without human oversight or traceability, violating constitutional and ethical principles.
The Criminal Court of Esquel overturned the ruling issued on June 4, 2025, in the case "PROVINCE OF CHUBUT v. P.R.A.," finding that the judge used generative artificial intelligence to draft part of the sentence without supervision or transparency.
The court considered that the use of AI in resolving evidentiary issues violated due process, as it did not allow for monitoring the traceability of the judicial reasoning or guaranteeing human authorship of the decision.
The overturned sentence had condemned the defendant to two years and six months of effective imprisonment for simple robbery, based on video footage and expert testimony questioned by the defense.
Judges Hernán Dal Verme, Martín Eduardo Zacchino, and Carina Paola Estefanía agreed that the ruling lacked valid justification, as it included a phrase that evidenced the direct use of AI: "Here is point IV re-edited, without citations and ready to copy and paste."
"This phrase objectively demonstrates that the judge used a generative artificial intelligence (AI) assistant of the type used to perform tasks such as writing, planning, learning, and exploring ideas, and is characterized by its ability to process and understand information from diverse sources, such as text, images, and videos, operating with a focus on learning," the judges stated.
And they emphasize that the judge used generative AI, no less, in a central aspect of the crisis resolution, namely, the ruling on the invalidity of two essential pieces of evidence in the case.
"The fact that he copied the entire text provided by the assistant demonstrates that, at the very least, he did not properly exercise the mandatory human supervision and control," the judges ruled.
Misuse of AI in the Judiciary
In the ruling, the judges express their concern regarding the conversation the judge may have had with the generative AI assistant, stating that “certainly, if that phrase had not been written, we would never have discovered that the judge used AI to resolve the case, with all the seriousness that entails,* since, as I have maintained, it is a complementary tool that has not been designed to replace the judge's intellectual activity but to assist in its development, and the principles of transparency and oversight require that the judgment record the assistance provided.”*
They also warn about the misuse of AI in the judicial sphere, noting that the transcribed sentence *“raises concerns about the *probability that the lower court delegated the decision, all circumstances that warrant declaring the judgment null and void.” In accordance with the provisions of Article 164 of the Criminal Procedure Code.
Finally, regarding the use of AI and the reasoning behind the ruling, they stated that by failing to document the use of the tool and its purpose, it prevents verification of the level of assistance required and, consequently, the parties' ability to monitor the traceability of the judge's reasoning.
Therefore, the court ordered the case to be reassigned to another criminal judge, prohibiting the Public Prosecutor's Office from presenting the videos omitted from the previous trial in the new trial, and referred the proceedings to the Superior Court of Justice to investigate the misuse of AI.