The Corte de Apelaciones de Santiago (Santiago Court of Appeals) had to correct a ruling on a recurso de amparo (a habeas corpus petition). The document, uploaded to the Poder Judicial (Chilean judiciary) platform, contained the instructions someone had given an artificial intelligence to draft part of the ruling.
According to T13, the text was reportedly added by mistake by Felipe Larraín, acting relator (court clerk) of the Ninth Chamber. The relator is the official who studies cases and prepares drafts for the judges. The correction was made on Wednesday afternoon.
The ruling ordered the fragment deleted: "This Court, noting that a document not pertaining to these proceedings has been added to this case, orders it removed". Justice Jenny Book, who presides over the chamber, explained that the AI instruction is not part of the ruling.
What was exposed is called a prompt, the written instruction given to an AI assistant to tell it what to do. It works like the recipe you hand someone before they cook. This one began: "You are a Judge of the Court of Appeals who must draft the reasoning section of the judgment".
The reasoning section is where the court explains its grounds. The prompt asked the AI to write from the fourth recital onward, using a template that worked for either granting or rejecting the petition, depending on which box was filled in.
The instructions were highly detailed. They set a maximum length of 750 words, required writing in the third person and present tense, and mandated connectors such as "Next", "Likewise" and "Finally". They also prohibited placing "don" or "doña" before names and gave rules for writing dates.
The prompt also included a pre-filled operative section. It cited Article 21 of the Constitution, which establishes the recurso de amparo to protect personal liberty, and the Supreme Court's auto acordado (procedural regulation) governing how it is processed.
According to Cooperativa, the ruling was signed by the Ninth Chamber, made up of Justice Book, acting Justice Christian Carvajal and associate attorney member Francisca Amigo. The sources do not specify which AI tool was used or the outcome of the petition.
The episode raises a practical question: if AI helps draft rulings, who checks what it writes before three judges sign it? The sources do not indicate whether the Poder Judicial has rules for this use.
According to La Tercera, cited by Cooperativa, Book asked Larraín for a report clarifying what happened within 24 hours. Based on that report, the full Court will decide whether to open a disciplinary inquiry.
