An expert witness testifying in a lawsuit about liability for a Houston explosion that killed three people and destroyed roughly 200 homes used ChatGPT to write significant portions of his “expert report.” The man, who was hired by the industrial product conglomerate 3M, exposed his AI prompts publicly. They showed that he asked ChatGPT to help him “create an exceptional expert witness report defending the standard of care at 3M,” and that the report should “show how 3M is 0% at fault for the explosion at Watson Grinding.”

The incident shows that artificial intelligence has made its way into courtrooms not just in AI-generated legal briefings, hallucinated cases, and adversarial “prompt injections,” but in expert witness testimonies. Court transcripts, deposition documents, and discovery records shared with 404 Media show extensive AI use in an extremely high profile case, where multiple people died and hundreds of millions of dollars in total liability are at stake in ongoing litigation about the explosion. The case also shows that the specific prompts used to create this type of expert testimony can be discoverable during a case, and that those prompts can be quite embarrassing. (Prompts provided in the case are here). 

The case is one of several about liability for a 2020 explosion at Watson Grinding, a manufacturing facility in Houston that was caused by a “degraded and poorly crimped rubber welding hose,” which leaked a flammable gas that eventually exploded in the facility, according to the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board. Dozens of homeowners have sued by 3M and Watson Grinding; the plaintiffs alleged that 3M didn’t properly service the facility’s gas detection system and made other errors that contributed to the explosion. 

As part of the case, 3M hired a man named Josh Autenrieth of Knighthawk Engineering to prepare an “expert report” about the explosion. During discovery in the case, Will Moye, one of the plaintiffs’ attorneys, found a five-page document called “Citation Overlay,” which appeared to have been generated by AI. Moye recognized the Citation Overlay document as being from ChatGPT, and demanded all of the prompts Autenrieth used from 3M’s lawyers. The deposition was paused for three hours while they were gathered, and Moye was given 350 pages of ChatGPT conversations that Autenrieth had when creating the report. Those documents included ChatGPT’s public links to Autenrieth’s full conversations. Court transcripts suggest that 3M paid Knighthawk Engineering roughly $90,000 for its analysis, and a filing by 3M shows that Autenrieth’s rate was $475 per hour.

The conversations show much of Autenrieth’s process from start to finish, which included telling ChatGPT that he was “being retained as a professional expert witness by 3M in defense of them in their lawsuits and other legal proceedings behind the January 2020 explosion at Watson Grinding.” He told ChatGPT  that he needed “to create an expert witness report to defend 3M’s standard of care for their work,” and that, specifically, it needed “to counter the defense witness [sic] outlandish and false claims particularly about working on equipment you are not trained to and without the right permitting.” He asked ChatGPT to help him find violations of various working standards, then attached hundreds of court records. 

Autenrieth then asked ChatGPT to read all of the attached records and to defend 3M, “illustrating the lack of [Process and Safety Management] and safety by Watson Grinding, defeating [the defense witness’] comments […] and show how 3M is 0% at fault for the explosion at Watson Grinding and how my background and experience is well suited to render this professional opinion.”  

ChatGPT created a roughly 30-page report that included the line “From a technical and standard-of-care standpoint, 3M is 0% responsible for the January 24, 2020 explosion.” This line did not make it into the final report filed with the court, because when Autenrieth later asked ChatGPT to “review this as the opposing council,” ChatGPT determined that writing “‘0% responsible’ is an easy target” for a lawyer to poke holes in, and is one of several "phrases [that] let opposing counsel paint you as an advocate rather than an expert."

In another chat, Autenrieth uploaded an image of a gas detector and asked ChatGPT “what am I looking at?,” and asked “what are model names of industrial gas detectors.” Moye said that the gas detector in question is “the subject of the whole case.” 

Autenrieth used ChatGPT to help him make various edits to the report it had generated, and repeatedly uploaded different versions of the report, getting revisions from the tool, then uploading new versions of the report (in some of the chats he changed the subject from his expert witness testimony to having ChatGPT generate t-shirt images). He also asked ChatGPT to “grade” his report (it got a 97/100), and “what are the 5 main things in my report the prosecution could attack and how do I defend them?” He then asked ChatGPT if his resume was sufficient to be an expert witness; “will prosecution go after me for never having been [an expert witness] before based on wording and how do I defend that?” 

The report that Autenrieth submitted to the court is structured the same as the initial output given by ChatGPT and large swaths of it are identical to what ChatGPT first outputted and the revisions that it recommended in Autenrieth’s subsequent chats.

“This expert relied on AI not as an assistive device, but exclusively relied on ChatGPT to form his opinions and write his report,” Moye told 404 Media in a phone interview. “He acknowledged [at trial] the prompts he put in were biased toward 3M to help 3M win the case […] it’s really egregious.” Moye added that many of the prompts took place the night before Autenrieth was deposed as an expert witness. “They hired him for the sole purpose of changing the outcome of the case. They hired him and he used ChatGPT to write these reports, so really, ChatGPT was the expert in the case. There’s just no question about that.”

Moye told 404 Media that 3M eventually tried to get Autenrieth disqualified from the trial, but that after he learned Autenrieth extensively used AI to generate his report, he took the somewhat unusual step of calling the other side’s expert witness as his own witness. “I said, I’m calling you to trial because I need a jury to hear from you because this is bad, bad stuff. And that’s exactly what I did,” Moye said.

In trial transcripts, Autenrieth admits to using ChatGPT, but said repeatedly that he is an expert in gas detection: “I've got a body of work and 20-plus years of experience in the industry.” He did not explain why he used ChatGPT, but said “my opinions were put in there, and AI helped me to draft a straw man to build off of,” and added “I put information and opinions in up front before it ever generated […] if the output wasn't of my opinion or what I agreed to, I did alter it.” In the examination at trial, Moye and Autenrieth agree that the submitted report is “90 to 85 percent ChatGPT.” Autenrieth also said that he prompted ChatGPT about the case several times while “sitting in traffic” to “jog my memory” about several different manufacturers of gas detectors. 

Beyond this being a highly interesting case on its own merits, it shows that ChatGPT transcripts can be obtained by opposing lawyers in discovery or during depositions. Moye said “every lawyer needs to make sure their own experts aren’t generating work product in a way that’s insincere, and then knowing you can subpoena the prompts [...] I’ve got lawyers all over the place saying, 1) ‘Holy shit, man. How did you get the prompts?,’ and 2) ‘How many cases do I have where this is happening to us?’”

Autenrieth is not the first expert caught using AI during a trial, though most known cases have been international, according to a database of cases in which AI was used to create evidence. In a case in France, a lawyer used AI to make an argument about rainwater patterns in a flooding dispute; that evidence was thrown out. In Canada, AI was used to generate opinions about whether specific types of plants caused a bug infestation at an apartment complex. The judge in that case wrote “I place no weight on the [AI evidence]. Expert evidence must come from a known individual with known qualifications who has specific knowledge about the issue at hand.” 

The jury in the 3M case awarded more than $61 million to the plaintiffs, apportioning 30 percent of the responsibility to 3M and 70 percent to Watson Grinding. Previous decisions awarded $118 million and 38 million to victims of the blast, and there are several more upcoming cases.

Knighthawk Engineering, Autenrieth, and 3M did not respond to a request for comment

I think we’re pretty good at telling the difference between an AI generated image and a real photograph, but when I need help I call Hany Farid. 

Farid is the cofounder of GetReal, a company that specializes in detecting deepfakes and other AI-generated images, and is the developer of PhotoDNA, a perceptual hashing algorithm that helps companies automatically detect and remove some of the worst images that exist online, and that is now being used by every serious internet platform in the world. 

We started talking to Hany regularly in 2017, when Sam first reported on deepfakes. As that technology evolved and changed how we perceive reality, so have our conversations. I wanted to talk to him today on the podcast so you could hear of those conversations, and so that Hany and I could zoom out, reflect on the past few years, and speculate about where we might be headed. 

404 Media is a journalist-founded company and needs your support. To subscribe, go to 404media.co. As well as bonus content every single week, subscribers get access to additional episodes where we respond to their best comments. Subscribers also get early access to our interview series. Gain access to that content at 404media.co.

Listen to the weekly podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube. 

Become a paid subscriber for early access to these interview episodes and to power our journalism. If you become a paid subscriber, check your inbox for an email from our podcast host Transistor for a link to the subscribers-only version! You can also add that subscribers feed to your podcast app of choice and never miss an episode that way. The email should also contain the subscribers-only unlisted YouTube link for the extended video version too. It will also be in the show notes in your podcast player.

De Amerikaanse president lijkt opnieuw toenadering te zoeken tot de Noord-Koreaanse leider Kim Jong-un. Daarbij zet hij wel zijn allianties in Azië op het spel.

De brandweervrijwilligers die samen het korps vormen van Cadzand, hebben een kort geding aangespannen om sluiting van hun kazerne te voorkomen. Er zijn te weinig vrijwilligers over, vindt de Veiligheidsregio. Er zijn perspectieven, zeggen de vrijwilligers zelf.

De Russische staat nam half juli het beheer over van de dochterbedrijven van AkzoNobel in Rusland. Kort daarop maakte het bedrijf omgerekend 10 miljoen euro over naar een groep die geld inzamelt voor de Russische oorlog tegen Oekraïne, blijkt uit berichten in Russische media.

Deputy leader says it is ‘arrogant’ to try to halt global heating, despite UK being left reeling by summer firewave

Reform’s deputy leader has dismissed efforts to tackle climate breakdown as futile, as he urged British people to “enjoy” the warmth of the recent heatwaves.

Richard Tice told a press conference on Monday he believed it was “arrogant” to try to stop the climate emergency and added that politicians should focus instead on adaptation efforts, while encouraging people to focus on upsides such as better English wine.

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When Berti Vogts was unveiled as Scotland’s first foreign manager, back in 2002, he had a simple instruction. “When we are playing,” he said, “you can call me Berti McVogts!” Scotland fans preferred a slightly courser sobriquet when, six months later, Scotland went 2-0 down to the Faroe Islands before scrambling a 2-2 draw. Vogts left after two-and-a-half ultimately unsuccessful years, and since then Scotland have preferred homegrown managers. But it’s good to try everything twice, except maybe Gigli, and the Scottish FA has appointed one of European football’s most interesting young managers: Sébastien Pocognoli, who was unveiled at a press conference on Monday.

Watching Manchester City under new management for the first time, it’s kind of spooky how much Enzo Maresca channels the ghost of Pep Guardiola on the touchline. Except they are losing” – Chris Jersan.

Dave Hill’s letter [Friday’s Football Daily] made me feel old. My immediate reaction was: ‘Too much money sloshing around at the top; there should be a salary cap.’ Then I realised that I could just about remember the campaign for a minimum wage for footballers. All in the span of one lifetime” – Trevor Townson.

Re: your mention in Friday’s Football Daily of Graeme Souness being sent off in the first half of his first game as Rangers player-manager v Hibs. This event led to pubs popular with Celtic fans in the east end of Glasgow being inundated with requests for a new drink: ‘I’ll have a Souness please … mine’s a half and then I’m off’” – Danny Sullivan.

This is an extract from our daily football email … Football Daily. To get the full version, just visit this page and follow the instructions. 

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She starred in her first soap opera at 4 – then the hit show Heroes was totally reworked to allow her character, Claire the regenerating cheerleader, to live on. We celebrate the star, who has died age 36

• Hayden Panettiere – a life in pictures

When Hayden Panettiere arrived as Claire Bennet in Heroes, in 2006, she was 17 but not a newcomer. She’d starred in Tiger Cruise, a Disney Channel movie, two years before and was the pin-perfect image of that teen-star world – blond, cute, perky, resourceful and all-American. Bennet the superhero was all those things, amped up to the point of fascinating distortion. She was a cheerleader who could endlessly regenerate. It was a topic of hot debate on fan sites whether or not she could feel pain, a question that was resolved piecemeal through the series. She could, but could instantly overcome it with her superpower – that fact partly informed the view of one academic, professor Olvido Andújar Molina, that Bennet was standing in for the American dream, its core components being strength, resilience and a sweet-natured homeliness.

In Tiger Cruise, Panettiere had filled a similar role, the cute-as-a-button daughter of a naval commander, producing this elemental, almost mournful Oz-like message: “Everything you long for is right here at home.” She was from a showbiz family, her mother, Lesley Vogel, was a soap actor, and her brother, Jansen, who also possessed those perfectly symmetrical features, co-starred in Tiger Cruise, and later, in 2011, in The Forger (better known as the last film Lauren Bacall ever made). Jansen also died horribly young, of complications from an engorged heart, in 2023 aged 28. Panettiere got her first soap opera gig, in One Life to Live, at the age of four, and went on to a recurring role into Guiding Light before she was 10. She was the voice of Dot in A Bug’s Life, and was nominated for a Grammy for her work on the film.

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‘People tell me it helped them with their rehab. I have to explain: Sorry, it’s not about alcohol – I was just a kid singing about injustice’

I wrote the lyrics on the floor of my bedroom in Basingstoke when I was 16 or 17, as a way of decompressing from studying for my A-levels. I had the idea for “Twist in my …” something, but didn’t know what else to put in there. I tried “Twist in my gravity” before ending up with “sobriety”, but it’s not a song about alcohol. It’s about feeling that things aren’t right in the world, and that adults can do terrible or immoral things – but none of it will change you. Fundamentally, it’s a song by an alienated teenager who feels there’s a lot of injustice. There’s something lovely about how intensely you feel things as a teenager.

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British sprinter catapulted herself into the mainstream by winning four golds in Birmingham and celebrated her final golden night in style

Long before Amy Hunt catapulted herself into the mainstream by winning an unprecedented four gold medals at the European Championships, she was remarkably upfront about her ambitions. There was no coyness. No equivocation. She wanted the quadruple in Birmingham. And having talked a good game, she delivered.

She celebrated her final golden night in Birmingham with a glass of champagne and a KFC, as well as a 2am massage to ensure her legs would be fresh for her next race in Lausanne on Friday. It meant going to bed at 4am. But despite being on four hours sleep on Monday morning, she is sharp as a tack as she explains why being bold is good for her – and her sport.

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Next year’s competition won’t take place in the country’s capital, an announcement that even surprised Bulgarian winner, Dara

Ever since Bulgarian singer Dara was crowned winner of the Eurovision song contest this May, it has been clear that the Balkan nation would for the first time in its history have the opportunity to host Europe’s biggest party.

So when Bulgarian officials announced last week that the world’s largest live music event in 2027 will be held not in the capital Sofia but in Burgas, a Black Sea port city home to 200,000 people, it came as a surprise – even to last year’s winner.

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Mother and son Olga and Nikita Belov were facing torture and death after their asylum claim was repeatedly rejected

A Russian family who were on the brink of being deported from Finland after repeatedly being denied asylum – despite the threat of arrest, imprisonment and torture for their pro-Ukrainian activism – have won a court appeal and will have their case reconsidered.

Nikita Belov and his mother, Olga Belov, fled their homeland for Finland in 2022 after attracting the attention of Russian authorities – including a military summons, threatening messages and attempts to locate them – for expressing opposition to the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

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Het Openbaar Ministerie heeft maandag tbs met dwangverpleging geëist tegen Anne Romke van der H. (33) uit het Groningse Uithuizen, omdat hij plannen zou hebben gehad om prinses Amalia te ontvoeren. Van der H. zou haar hebben willen meenemen naar Polen om met haar te trouwen, meent justitie. Door hem aangeschafte bijlen zouden daarbij dienstbaar zijn.

De officier van justitie zei dat er onvoldoende bewijs is dat de verdachte de prinsessen Amalia en Alexia wilde doden of letsel wilde toebrengen.

Bij zijn aanhouding in januari in een hotel in Den Haag was de verdachte in het bezit van twee bijlen met daarin gekerfd de woorden Alexia, Mossad en Sieg Heil. Daarnaast had hij in zijn agenda een handgeschreven tekst met de woorden Amalia, Alexia en bloedbad.

Van der H. verkeerde volgens justitie in een psychose en was in de veronderstelling dat hij van hogerhand de opdracht had gekregen om met prinses Amalia te gaan survivalen in Polen. Hij had daarvoor ook survivalspullen gekocht. Hij was er daarnaast van overtuigd dat hij een relatie had met Amalia.

The performances will take place on Oct. 10 and 11 at the Gazprom Arena, a venue capable of hosting around 80,000 spectators.

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

If you ever find yourself in the East Village in New York City, do yourself a favor and grab a smashburger at Cafe Maude.

You won’t regret it.

It goes well with a Five Boroughs Pilsner.

Op de A15 zijn ter hoogte van Papendrecht twee voertuigen op elkaar gebotst. Hierbij belandde de achterste auto op zijn kop. De weg was lange tijd volledig afgesloten richting Rotterdam.

Op de A15 zijn ter hoogte van Papendrecht twee voertuigen op elkaar gebotst. Hierbij belandde de achterste auto op zijn kop. De weg is vanaf Sliedrecht-Oost in de richting van Rotterdam volledig afgesloten.

Some take their criticism even further. Reacting to Flock's changes, an EFF statement calls it "Too little, too late," while calling it Flock's admission that their technology needs reforms. But...

To be clear, our position has long been that police, at a minimum, need to get a warrant, signed by a judge, in order to search for historic ALPR data regarding specific vehicles. For us, it's common sense: if police want to dip into historic ALPR data like they were going back in time to retroactively follow your comings and goings, they need a warrant.


There's also nothing stopping Flock from rescinding these latest reforms.

This all leads to the bigger and more important issue: We should not be letting companies decide how much privacy we deserve... It shouldn't be up to Flock or any other ALPR vendor to decide how long police can collect and retain data on millions, if not hundreds of millions, of innocent people. We need lawmakers to step up and pass laws that restrict police's use of surveillance technology.

After all, the surveillance business model is the problem, and a few company-imposed slapdash reforms aren't going to change that.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.