The Novena Sala (Ninth Chamber) of the Corte de Apelaciones de Santiago (Santiago Court of Appeals) issued a new resolution on Wednesday to remove from the case file the instructions someone gave an artificial intelligence (AI) tool to draft part of a ruling. The instructions had been included in the case "MITARAKIS/CORREA (LTE)".
According to BioBioChile, the court ordered the removal of the pages that did not belong there. "This Court, noting that a document not pertaining to these proceedings has been added to this case, orders that it be deleted", the resolution states.
What was exposed was a prompt, meaning the written instruction given to an AI program so that it generates a text. It works like a task you would leave for an assistant. It began: "You are a judge of the Court of Appeals who must draft the reasoning section of the ruling [rejecting/upholding] the appeal".
The full text, published by T13, was a detailed template. It asked for the drafting of the fourth recital and following, the use of connectors such as "Likewise" or "Finally", writing in the present tense and third person, and a limit of 750 words. It even left blanks to fill in who was filing the appeal and against whom.
One detail gave the error away. According to El Mostrador, the resolution, issued on Tuesday, October 6, concerned a civil case about abandonment of proceedings. The prompt, however, referred to a recurso de amparo (habeas corpus petition), the action that protects personal liberty and that had no connection to that litigation.
El Mostrador and T13 identified substitute relator Felipe Larraín as responsible. The relator is the official who studies cases and prepares background material for the justices. The chamber's presiding judge, ministra (Justice) Jenny Book, clarified that the text was included by mistake and that it was not part of the judges' decision nor used to decide the case, as reported by La Tercera.
Book ordered the document to be corrected and asked Larraín for a report within a 24-hour deadline. With that information, the full bench of the Santiago court could consider disciplinary measures, including opening a sumario, an internal administrative investigation.
The case raises an uncomfortable question about the checks carried out before signing. The resolution bore the signatures of three members of the chamber, and no one caught the text addressed to the AI in time.
The Poder Judicial (Chile's Judiciary) has ethical principles establishing that judicial decisions are the exclusive responsibility of judges. Even so, according to El Mostrador, doubts remain about how the use of these tools in drafting resolutions is regulated and supervised. The sources do not specify which AI tool was used or how often such tools are used at the court.
The next step is Larraín's report. Based on it, the full bench of the Santiago court will decide whether to open a sumario.