Courts issued two seemingly conflicting rulings on whether AI generated materials are protected. Heppner (S.D.N.Y.) found that documents created with a consumer version of Claude AI were not privileged or work product because the tool exposed data to a third party provider. Warner (E.D. Mich.) reached the opposite result the
United States v. Heppner
SDNY Addresses Privilege and Work Product Implications of Using Unsecured Public AI Tools
A recent decision in United States v. Heppner appears to be the first federal ruling to directly address attorney‑client privilege and work‑product issues arising from a non‑lawyer’s use of a consumer-grade insecure AI tool for legal research. The court held that materials generated through Anthropic’s consumer version of Claude were…