Post · bonfire.cafe

UK Upper Tribunal rules that uploading documents to an 'open source' LLM breaches confidentiality and waives legal privilege (by putting them in the public domain). Not sure the tribunal has understood what 'open source' means (ChatGPT is, Copilot isn't apparently) but that's the decision.

Could be overturned by a higher court, but a warning not to just chuck stuff into LLMs and assume it will be fine.

Munir v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2026] UKUT 81

https://tribunalsdecisions.service.gov.uk/utiac/2026-ukut-00081

Tribunal decisions

Neil Brown

@neil@mastodon.neilzone.co.uk · 2 hours ago

@pwaring
For me, one of the most concerning aspects was that, in the first case, the solicitor apparently did not realise that he was using "gen AI" - it seems that he thought that was conducting a Google search.

That's... challenging.

(Separate to the issue of uploading documents to ChatGPT.)

Paul

@pwaring@social.xk7.net · 2 hours ago

@neil Agreed, that is quite concerning given that Google and DuckDuckGo (and no doubt others) give you 'AI results' by default on searches, even when you haven't asked for them ('Search Assist' for example makes no mention of AI).

Neil Brown

@neil@mastodon.neilzone.co.uk · 2 hours ago

@pwaring Yes, this.

It absolutely does not deal with the issue of inadequate supervision / checking etc., but it is concerning in itself.