ChatGPT was launched by OpenAI, an American-based AI research and deployment company, in November 2022. The free, easy to access tool quickly captured the public’s attention. Described in the New York Times as “quite simply, the best artificial intelligence chatbot ever released to the general public”, ChatGPT hit 1 million users in 5 days and skyrocketed to 100 million users in January. In response to ChatGPT’s launch, both Microsoft and Google have announced plans to offer new AI-enhanced, chat-based search tools.
It wasn’t long before lawyers started paying attention. A quick Google search yields over 40,000 hits for “ChatGPT” and “the practice of law” including dramatic headlines such as: “ChatGPT: Will AI Replace Lawyers?”, “Will ChatGPT make lawyers obsolete? (Hint: be afraid)” and “ChatGPT and the Practice of Law: Ignore at Your Peril.” In January, the CEO of a consumer legal tech tool (reportedly built on the same underlying GPT-3 technology
