Submissions to the Honourable Chief Justice Will Alstergren AO, Chief Justice of Federal Circuit and Family Court of Australia dated 7 October 2025

I. Introduction

1. This submission is provided to assist the Federal Circuit and Family Court of Australia as it considers how to address the use of generative artificial intelligence in judicial and professional practice. The Court has not yet issued formal guidance on this subject, but it is understood that the Court is actively assessing its approach.
2. The purpose of this submission is twofold:
   
   1. To set out the baseline understanding of generative AI reflected in guidance already issued by other Australian courts and tribunals; and
   2. To illustrate what can now be done differently, showing that AI systems need not be limited to probabilistic text generation but can be designed to reflect law’s discipline — verifiable, auditable, and structured according to legal method.

II. National Baseline Understanding

3. Across jurisdictions, courts have converged on a baseline understanding of generative AI:
   
   1. LLMs are probabilistic text generators that predict the next word.
   2. They do not reason in a human or legal sense.
   3. They are prone to hallucinations (non-existent cases).
   4. Their processes are opaque (no audit trail).
   5. They conflate fact, inference, and opinion.
   6. Human verification of all citations is essential.