Have You Been "AI Slop" Audited Yet?
Have you ever received a list of questions, or a list of problems, with a document that you sent over to a client? Oh, just you wait. It is coming.
Maybe it was your general advice, drafted response in a lawsuit, or strategy notes that you wanted your clients thoughts or blessing. Instead you got a response that included all the reasons why ChatGPT thinks you’re an idiot.
Now anyone can audit anyone
Many of us use ChatGPT, Muse, Manus, Gemini, or pick your flavor of AI platform, to perform analysis that would have previously taken hours, or years of schooling to develop the knowledge from a specialized degree. Now it can be done in a matter of minutes, or while we are doing something else at the same time.
Taking a shortcut for something that is within our own skill set is one thing. Using AI to audit the work of someone with a law degree or another specialty is an obvious example of “AI slop” as my junior in college calls it.
Prompt, Answer, Copy and Paste, Resend without Reading
The information that the untrained person gets back likely makes even less sense to them than the document they are trying to audit.
This often starts as a prompt like “can you point out all of the problems with this legal advice.” The problem with a prompt like this (according to Google’s AI Mode) is that AI models are explicitly trained to be helpful assistants, which creates a built-in “sycophancy bias” or a tendency to agree with and validate the user. Meaning that it will generate pages of issues and ideas for improvement.
Becoming better at prompting is something we should all work to continually approve, but that’s content for a different post.
A better prompt might be “review this document and let me know if it seems to be sound legal advice that serves my goals”.
The response is often copy and pasted into an email reply and sent right back to the original sender, without having read it. They did not read it for a good reason. They would not be able to understand it, and they do not have the experience to put the information into context.
A mole hill of AI info creates a mountain of real work
Handing a lawyer an AI generated audit of their legal advice/document creates a mountain of work that requires investigation and a response. It’s also a quick way to put the client/attorney relationship on thin ice…especially since the attorney’s strategy are now in a public AI platform and might later be unprotected during discovery.
If this has happened to you, no doubt you have felt that your client is massively wasting your time.
They may feel the opposite. They will feel like they are providing additional assistance to help you do your job better and faster, and they will want your feedback on all of the items that “they” discovered.
Things NOT to consider
Frequently, a strong percentage of an AI slop response includes best practices, alternative ideas, and other concepts to consider.
An experienced attorney likely made those considerations already or knew through experience that they were not applicable.
Unfortunately, the AI slop document provided by the client has now forced them to read through all of those same possible considerations again, making the whole exercise redundant.
This is out of scope! Your time is a limited resource.
Like many professionals, lawyers can only charge for their time.
So, it may not be a bad idea to consider an AI slop clause in your fee agreement. It would specify that any abuse or misuse of AI, or AI audits of produced work, will require a change in scope.
If additional time is required to read, analyze, research, and validate AI generated content, then additional fees or an additional retainer will be incurred.
Growing Problem
There is real value in client participation and engagement.
But when AI starts giving a person more confidence in their own “knowledge” than in the professional they hired, we have a problem.
AI is here to stay, and learning to use it effectively is part of doing business in an increasingly AI-driven world. But there is a difference between using AI to ask better questions and using it to second-guess the professionals you have hired to protect your interests.
For attorneys and other service professionals, now is the time to set clear expectations, establish boundaries, and make sure your agreements account for the extra work that AI misuse can create. At Fuel Web Marketing, we help businesses adapt to the changing digital landscape and understand how AI is reshaping client expectations. Contact us today to learn how your business can stay ahead of the curve without losing sight of what matters most: your expertise, your reputation, and the relationships you have worked hard to build.
