Are There Attorneys Crying Wolf About AI Hallucinations When Human Lawyer Slop Is Really To Blame?

InnovationAIAre There Attorneys Crying Wolf About AI Hallucinations When Human Lawyer Slop Is Really To Blame?ByLance Eliot,Contributor.Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. Dr. Lance B. Eliot is a world-renowned AI scientist and consultant.Follow AuthorMay 08, 2026, 03:15am EDTAre claims of AI hallucinations sometimes an excuse for actual human slop?gettyIn today’s column, I examine an intriguing and perhaps abrasive question that some are starting to ask about the nonstop barrage of lawyers blaming AI for generating AI hallucinated citations and quotations as part of their legal filings.The pointed question is this:Might it be that some of these instances of errors and sloppiness in such legal filings are due to human lawyers being lax, either by design or by accident, and they end up crafting unsubstantiated quotes and citations by their own human hand, hoping they won’t get caught, and if they do get caught, they can simply and connivingly say that AI did it?Please note that this is not an indication that the lawyer failed to double-check AI hallucinated content. This supposition is that they didn’t use AI at all. The crux is that there are some lawyers who, when in a rush to file required documents, find themselves pressed for time. They then handcraft quotations that they assume are good enough, and they take a stab at citations that they think will look just about right. Of course, this would be an egregious violation of their legal duties. It is inconceivable that a lawyer would take that kind of legal death knell chance (perhaps “inconceivable” in The Prince Bride kind of way). The counterargument is that they might be willing to do so if they strongly believed that they had a get-out-of-jail-free card, namely, to merely blame it on AI.AI becomes the perfect patsy, the best possible excuse. Everyone nowadays clearly knows that AI hallucinates. It’s in blaring headlines constantly. Everybody accepts that it is hard to know whe...