On November 30, 2022, OpenAI released ChatGPT. Within two months, ChatGPT gained more  than 100 million users. This artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot impressed its users with its articulate and (often unsettling) human-like answers. The speed with which ChatGPT became so  popular surprised even the engineers at OpenAI. Now, we can’t read any news source without hearing about AI. Major tech companies such as Google, Microsoft, and others are developing their own AI products, and there is a surge in AI-based start-ups. Everyone wants to leverage this incredible technology for their industry, especially legal technology companies.

As a trial technology consultant, I stay current on all new technology developments that could help trial attorneys. AI tools take over repetitive and time-consuming tasks. With these force multipliers, trial preparation and the process of trials go more efficiently, which helps lawyers, staff, judges, and jurors. But as exciting as these tools may be, we cannot dive in without knowing how to use them.

Evidence can be anything. Any item, testimony, fact, idea, or information can be offered as evidence so long as it makes the existence of a fact more or less probable to a jury. The Federal Rules of Evidence and traditional common law determine whether or not evidence can be admissible; they deal with traditional situations such as eyewitness testimony or how to consider established facts or written records. However, technological innovations now come about every day, providing entirely new ways to record, store, or otherwise extrapolate pieces of evidence that prove or disprove how an occurrence happened. How does one prove the reliability of social media posts or recordings from a smart home device? In the very near future, evidence will be conceived and generated by machines, with minimal to no human involvement. Where do you begin to convince a judge to allow evidence generated by artificial intelligence?