AI trips up Singapore husband’s court battle against wife as magistrate says: Check what you submit

SINGAPORE, July 11 — A Singapore man who claimed his wife left him hungry, broke and physically weakened lost his bid for a protection order after a judge found his story did not quite add up — and then gave him a lesson in using artificial intelligence responsibly.

The husband had accused his wife of emotional and psychological abuse, claiming she controlled his life for more than a decade and reduced him to a “pathetic and destitute state”.

But Magistrate Soh Kian Peng was not convinced, pointing to evidence that painted a different picture, including the husband’s own testimony that he could carry three 5kg bags of flour home over 1.2km, The Straits Times reported today.

“If he was indeed destitute, and left in such a state where he was so physically weak such that his bones had become brittle, and his teeth had rotted away, it was quite unlikely – even giving generous allowances for the resilience of the human body and the strength of the human spirit – that he would have been able to haul that quantity of flour, over that distance, all the way home,” Soh was quoted as saying in his judgment dated June 30.

The court also reviewed videos of the couple’s interactions and found the husband appeared far from helpless, with Soh noting that “the husband was clearly able to hold his ground with a clear air of defiance”.

The magistrate said the husband’s struggles appeared linked instead to his difficulty coping after losing his job in 2009.

“It was also evident to me that he did not have healthy ways of coping and adjusting, and as a result, fell into a destructive spiral.

“In my judgment, it is the husband, and not the wife, who was responsible for the destitute state that he found himself in,” the magistrate was quoted as saying.

The husband’s application for a personal protection order was dismissed, and he was ordered to pay S$10,000 (RM33,100) in costs to his wife.

But the unusual case did not end there, with the magistrate also taking issue with the husband’s use of AI while preparing his court documents.

The husband had cited a legal case that turned out not to exist when arguing that he should be given access to his wife’s counselling reports.

He told the court he used AI only to prepare first drafts and standard affidavit templates, which he later reviewed and edited.

However, Soh said the documents contained unusual structures and wording, including the husband switching between referring to himself in the first and third person.

The magistrate stressed that using AI was not itself a problem, but warned litigants against blindly relying on its output.

“It bears emphasising that litigants are not prohibited from using generative AI,” the magistrate was quoted as saying. 

“But they must take responsibility for its output, especially where this is evidence that will be presented to the court. The very issue with using generative AI in the drafting of such documents is the temptation to rely entirely on the algorithm without applying one’s mind to the actual output,” he added.

The court said it placed no reliance on the husband’s AI-assisted statements.