The High Court has accepted two apologies from the Crown Prosecution Service after it was caught using artificial intelligence to compose court documents for extradition cases.
The CPS initially admitted in a letter to the court that its error of including authorities that did not exist had not been identified by the respondents but drawn to their attention by counsel for the appellants.
However, the judgment in Andreea-Maria Tobosaru v Court of Law Craiolva, Romania, said: ‘It subsequently transpired that this was inaccurate. Junior counsel instructed for the respondents had also been unable to locate the authorities and independently raised the matter with the CPS shortly before it was separately identified by those acting for the appellants.’
The CPS then made a ‘further apology for this error’.
The non-existent authorities were relied upon in grounds of opposition prepared by the CPS to demonstrate the continued application of the reasoning in the House of Lords’ decision in Pilecki v Poland [2008]. The same two erroneous citations were then used in a further document in the appeal, prepared by junior counsel but were not relied upon in the skeleton argument.
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Mr Justice Sweeting, who dismissed the appeals against extradition orders for two individuals, said the CPS ‘made clear that there had been no intention to mislead the court’. The judgment added: ‘In its letter, dated 3 March 2026, the CPS accepted that the citations were inaccurate and explained that they were likely to have originated from the use of artificial intelligence.
‘However, the CPS identified the critical failing as the fact that the reviewing lawyer did not properly check the accuracy of the document before it was filed and served.
‘The position of the CPS was therefore that, while the immediate source of the error may have been the use of generative artificial intelligence, the operative cause was human error in the failure to verify the authorities relied upon in formal submissions placed before the court. The CPS emphasised that this was not a deliberate attempt to mislead, but rather an isolated incident arising from inadequate checking of written work.’
The CPS said it had undertaken steps, including a full internal review, which showed risk of recurrence was low.
Though the errors came to light before the appeal and had ‘no impact on argument or the court’s judgment’, the judge said: ‘I have noted the steps taken to ensure that there is no repetition but considered that it was necessary to set out what had taken place in this judgment given the serious consequences that an error of this nature might have had in other circumstances.
‘It would be naive to assume that there will not be an increasing use of artificial intelligence in legal work in future; indeed, that may be both necessary and beneficial. The episode highlights the risks of its use without appropriate oversight particularly for legal research.’
He added that he ‘accepted the apology given on behalf of the [CPS] and the assurance that there was no attempt to mislead’.
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