Recently, I’ve been testing how consumers can use AI prompts to do their own legal research. Yesterday I was working on an article on Pay on Death Deeds for Real Estate in each state.
Some (most) states allow them. But some do not.
When testing the AI prompt for residents of New Jersey, I discovered a site called “Snug” with wrong information about New Jersey law, and yet is highly ranked by Google.
The information on the Snug site was apparently generated by AI and never checked by a fact checker. It confidently states that New Jersey has TOD (Transfer of Death) Deeds for Real Estate.
In fact, New Jersey does not. Any search of the web will tell you fairly quickly that, while in 2023, New Jersey started offering TOD options on automobiles, New Jersey law still does not offer such options for Real Estate.
Nevertheless, the site called “Snug” had clearly wrong hallucinations about New Jersey law, which it says it wrote in January 2024.
From what we can tell the getsnug website is completely created by AI with no human oversight and is riddled with incorrect statements of law. And yet Google is ranking it highly.
Worse, this kind of incorrect, AI-generated content is now being picked up and promoted by search engines, and generative AI tools like Google Gemini and Claude AI can produce wrong answers.
In this case, Google Gemini got the law correct for New Jersey, but in other cases, I’ve seen Gemni cite content on the Snug website as authoritative, and it ranks high in Google searches even though it is clearly AI-generated and has not been reviewed by a human for accuracy.
It’s a mess out there, people! Be Careful! Welcome to the new world! Yikes!