On February 14, 2025, I will be speaking at the Suffolk Academy of Law’s annual Elder Law Update, addressing current developments in artificial intelligence (“AI”) that are relevant to trusts and estates practice, among other topics.  In preparing for that presentation, I came across a recent Surrogate’s Court, Saratoga County, decision in Matter of Weber, in which the court found that a party’s counsel has a duty to disclose to the court the fact that the party’s hearing evidence has been generated by AI.  I now address the Weber court’s AI-based findings below.

AI has been “defined as being any technology that uses machine learning, natural language processing, or any other computational mechanism to simulate human intelligence, including document generation, evidence creation or analysis, and legal research, and/or the capability of computer systems or algorithms to imitate intelligent human behavior” (Matter of Weber, 220 NYS3d 620, 635 [Sur Ct, Saratoga County 2024]).  It “can be either generative or assistive in nature” (id.).  Generative AI is “artificial intelligence that is capable of generating new content (such as images or text) in response to a submitted prompt (such as a query) by learning from a large reference database of examples” (id.).  AI “assistive materials are any document or evidence prepared with the assistance of AI technologies, but not solely generated thereby” (id.).Continue Reading Does Counsel Have a Duty to Disclose to a Surrogate’s Court the Fact That Hearing Evidence That Counsel Proffers Has Been Generated by Artificial Intelligence?