Colombia: Cartagena ChatGPT ruling and Sentencia T-323/24

What happened

A mother brought a tutela, Colombia's expedited constitutional complaint, against her son's health insurer. She sought exemption from copayments and moderating fees for his autism therapies and coverage of transport to treatment. A municipal court granted relief on December 7, 2022. On January 30, 2023, Judge Juan Manuel Padilla García of the First Labor Court of the Cartagena Circuit confirmed that ruling on second instance.

The judge disclosed in the ruling that he had consulted ChatGPT. According to the Constitutional Court's later judgment, he asked it whether a child with autism is exempt from copayments for therapy, whether a tutela should be granted in such a case, whether charging the fees is a barrier to access to care, and whether Constitutional Court precedent supported the exemption. The disclosure drew public criticism in Colombia. El Colombiano quoted University of Rosario professor Juan David Gutiérrez: "ciertamente no es responsable ni ético usar ChatGPT como pretendió el Juez" (it is certainly neither responsible nor ethical to use ChatGPT as the judge intended).

What the court did

The Constitutional Court selected the case for review and issued Sentencia T-323 of 2024 on August 2, 2024. It found no violation of due process. It concluded that the judge had decided the case through ordinary judicial reasoning before consulting ChatGPT, and had used the responses only to extend his written reasoning. It found that the principles of transparency and accountability had not been fully met.

The Court exhorted judges to evaluate their use of ChatGPT and similar tools under principles that include "(i) transparencia, (ii) responsabilidad, (iii) privacidad, (iv) no sustitución de la racionalidad humana, (v) seriedad y verificación." It ordered the Consejo Superior de la Judicatura, the judiciary's governing council, to issue within 4 months "una guía, manual o lineamiento en relación con la implementación de la IA generativa en la Rama Judicial." It also directed the national judicial school to disseminate the decision and train judges. On the health claims, it largely confirmed the lower courts and broadened the transport order.

Where it stands

The judgment is final. Whether the Consejo Superior de la Judicatura issued the ordered guidance, and in what form, was not confirmed in the sources reviewed.

The obligation it engaged

The Court's reasoning follows the order in Clause 1 of the Expert Record Standard, sequence. The judge's decision was treated as valid because he formed it before consulting the system. His disclosure met Clause 8, and it is the reason the use could be reviewed at all. The Court's finding that transparency and accountability were incomplete points to Clause 7, a contemporaneous record, and to Clause 3. The Court expected responses about precedent to be verified before they were relied on, and its principle of "seriedad y verificación" says as much.

According to a summary of the judgment published by Universidad Externado, the Court also noted that no personal data of the parties was entered into the system, a Clause 6 consideration. For experts working with protected records, that is the first question to ask before any consultation.

Sources

• Corte Constitucional de Colombia · August 2, 2024
  Sentencia T-323 de 2024 (copy hosted by Foro Administración, Gestión y Política Pública)
• Universidad Externado de Colombia · October 7, 2024
  Resumen de la Sentencia T-323 de 2024 de la Corte Constitucional de Colombia sobre el uso de IA por jueces de la República
• El Colombiano · February 2023
  Juez de Cartagena utilizó la inteligencia artificial de ChatGPT para definir sentencia

What could not be confirmed

The official Constitutional Court page was located but could not be opened; the judgment was read from a hosted PDF copy. El Colombiano's report dates the ruling to early February 2023; the Constitutional Court's judgment gives January 30, 2023. Whether the Consejo Superior de la Judicatura issued the ordered guidance was not confirmed.