Use of generative artificial intelligence by judicial officers

(a) Definitions

As used in this standard, the following definitions apply:

(1) “Court staff” means all employees, contractors, volunteers, and any other persons working for or on behalf of the court.

(2) “Generative artificial intelligence” or “generative AI” means a computer-based system that uses machine learning or similar techniques to produce new content—such as text, images, audio, video, code, or data visualizations—in response to user inputs. Generative AI systems create content that is not pre-programmed or explicitly retrieved but synthesized based on underlying models trained on large datasets and may include integration with other sources, such as real-time access to proprietary databases.

(3) “Judicial officer” means all judges of the superior courts, all justices of the Courts of Appeal and the Supreme Court, all temporary and assigned judges, and all subordinate judicial officers.

(4) “Public generative AI system” means a generative AI system that allows anyone other than court staff or judicial officers to access the data that courts input or upload to the system or to use that data to train AI systems. “Public generative AI system” does not include any system that the court creates or manages, such as a generative AI system created for internal court use, or any court-operated system the court uses to provide those outside the court with access to court data, such as a court-operated chatbot that answers questions about court services.

(b) Use of generative artificial intelligence

A judicial officer using generative AI for any task within their adjudicative role:

(1) Should not enter confidential, personal identifying, or other nonpublic information into a public generative AI system. Personal identifying information includes driver’s license numbers; dates of birth; Social Security numbers; National Crime Information and Criminal Identification and Information numbers; addresses and phone numbers of parties, victims, witnesses, and court personnel; medical or psychiatric information; financial information; account numbers; and any other content sealed by court order or deemed confidential by court rule or statute.

(2) Should not use generative AI to unlawfully discriminate against or disparately impact individuals or communities based on age, ancestry, color, ethnicity, gender, gender expression, gender identity, genetic information, marital status, medical condition, military or veteran status, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, and any other classification protected by federal or state law.

(3) Should take reasonable steps to verify that generative AI material, including any material prepared on their behalf by others, is accurate, and should take reasonable steps to correct any erroneous or hallucinated output in any material used.

(4) Should take reasonable steps to remove any biased, offensive, or harmful content in any generative AI material used, including any material prepared on their behalf by others.

(5) Should consider whether to disclose the use of generative AI if it is used to create content provided to the public.