Artificial intelligence (AI) now plays a role in many business activities. Your company may use AI to draft emails, summarize meetings, create reports, or assist with internal communications. An AI-generated meeting summary may look no different from one written by an employee. The same may be true for an email draft, an internal report, or notes from a virtual meeting.
If a contract dispute, shareholder lawsuit, or other business conflict arises, those records could become evidence. The parties may then look at who created the content, whether it accurately reflects the facts, and what records support where it came from.
How AI is becoming part of the business record
Many companies use AI to create or organize information that becomes part of their business records. That information could later play a role in a lawsuit involving a contract dispute, ownership conflict, employment claim, or other commercial matter. Common examples of AI-generated materials include:
- Drafting business emails
- Summarizing meetings
- Producing internal reports
- Recording meeting notes
- Creating customer communications
- Generating marketing materials
If a dispute involves these records, both sides will likely review how they were created. They may look at who reviewed the content, whether it accurately reflects a conversation or event, and how it changed before reaching its final form.
Authenticity questions may become more common
Before a court accepts evidence, the parties generally must show that it is genuine. AI may create new challenges when one side questions the reliability of a document, image, audio recording, or video.
For example, a party may argue that an AI tool altered a document or created content that does not accurately reflect what actually happened. Even when the challenge fails, the parties may spend additional time and money addressing the issue. As businesses increase their use of AI, courts may see more disputes about whether digital evidence is trustworthy.
Discovery obligations in the age of AI
Lawsuits already require parties to collect and exchange large amounts of electronic information. Examples of information that may become relevant during discovery include:
- Using prompts to generate content
- Creating draft versions of documents
- Maintaining chat histories with AI tools
- Preserving metadata associated with files
- Tracking revisions to generated content
Whether this information matters will depend on the facts of the case. When AI-generated content plays a central role in a dispute, parties may seek additional records to determine where the material came from and whether it is accurate.
Why these issues may receive greater scrutiny
AI tools can create content quickly, but they can also make it harder to identify who created a document, when someone created it, and whether anyone later changed it. Those questions can become important when a disputed communication, report, or business record plays a key role in a lawsuit.
Businesses continue to expand their use of AI. As a result, courts will likely encounter more disputes involving AI-generated content. Questions about whether evidence is genuine, accurate, and supported by other records may play a larger role when parties rely on AI-assisted materials.