A UK judge has ordered Craig Wright to pay £225,000 ($290,000) of the Crypto Open Patent Alliance’s (COPA) legal costs after ruling Wright “improperly” used AI to file his appeal and “risked significantly misleading the court.”
That’s according to a court order shared by PA News Agency, in which Lord Justice Arnold claimed the volume of Wright’s appeal submissions were “exceptional, wholly unnecessary, and wholly disproportionate.”
He ordered Wright to pay an “appropriate” sum of £100,000 to cover COPA’s appeal costs and £125,000 for the legal costs of various other developers today.
Justice Arnold said Wright “Improperly used AI to prepare his submissions, which risked significantly misleading the court“ and “pursued his applications in part for ulterior motives, and in particular in support of his publicity campaign.”
Read more: Craig Wright gets 2-year suspended sentence in COPA contempt case
A representative of Bird & Bird, the legal firm representing COPA, told PA News Agency, “This is a stark warning to litigants, and in particular litigants in person, about the risks of using generative AI tools to create court documents.”
The ruling is reportedly the first instance in UK civil courts where someone has had to pay costs over their use of AI.
In December, Wright claimed he was in Asia, and more recently said he was in an 80km/h head-on collision with a truck that caused damage to his shoulder and knee.
Read more: Craig Wright COPA appeal rejected by UK court as meritless
Wright’s appeal against a High Court judgment, ruling that he’s not the inventor of Bitcoin, failed last November. In a separate case, he was ordered to pay COPA’s legal costs after he was found guilty of contempt of court last December.
