An expert witness hired by 3M used ChatGPT to draft significant portions of his expert report in a lawsuit over a Houston explosion that killed three people and destroyed roughly 200 homes, according to court records.
404Media reports that the witness, Josh Autenrieth of Knighthawk Engineering, publicly exposed his AI prompts, which showed he had asked ChatGPT to help him “create an exceptional expert witness report defending the standard of care at 3M” and to “show how 3M is 0 percent at fault for the explosion at Watson Grinding.”
The case centers on a 2020 explosion at Watson Grinding, a manufacturing facility in Houston. According to the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board, the blast was caused by a “degraded and poorly crimped rubber welding hose” that leaked flammable gas. Dozens of homeowners sued 3M and Watson Grinding, alleging that 3M failed to properly service the facility’s gas detection system, among other errors that contributed to the explosion.
3M hired Autenrieth to prepare an expert report on the explosion. During discovery, plaintiffs’ attorney Will Moye found a five-page document titled “Citation Overlay” that appeared to be AI-generated. Moye recognized it as ChatGPT output and demanded all prompts Autenrieth had used. The deposition was paused for three hours while 3M’s lawyers gathered the material, and Moye ultimately received 350 pages of ChatGPT conversations, including public links to Autenrieth’s full chat history. Court transcripts indicate 3M paid Knighthawk Engineering roughly $90,000 for the analysis, with Autenrieth billing at $475 per hour.
The conversations show Autenrieth telling ChatGPT he was “being retained as a professional expert witness by 3M in defense of them in their lawsuits and other legal proceedings behind the January 2020 explosion at Watson Grinding.” He said he needed “to create an expert witness report to defend 3M’s standard of care for their work,” specifically to “counter the defense witness [sic] outlandish and false claims particularly about working on equipment you are not trained to and without the right permitting.” He then asked the chatbot to identify violations of various working standards after attaching hundreds of court records.
Autenrieth asked ChatGPT to review the records and defend 3M by “illustrating the lack of [Process and Safety Management] and safety by Watson Grinding, defeating [the defense witness’] comments […] and show how 3M is 0 percent at fault for the explosion at Watson Grinding and how my background and experience is well suited to render this professional opinion.”
ChatGPT produced a roughly 30-page report stating that “from a technical and standard-of-care standpoint, 3M is 0 percent responsible for the January 24, 2020 explosion.” That line was cut from the final filing after Autenrieth asked the chatbot to “review this as the opposing council,” and ChatGPT warned that “0% responsible” was “an easy target” and one of several “phrases [that] let opposing counsel paint you as an advocate rather than an expert.”
In another exchange, Autenrieth uploaded a photo of a gas detector and asked ChatGPT “what am I looking at?” and requested model names of industrial gas detectors. Moye said that detector was “the subject of the whole case.” Autenrieth also had ChatGPT grade his report, which scored 97 out of 100, and asked what weaknesses “the prosecution could attack.” He asked whether his resume was sufficient to qualify as an expert witness and how to defend against claims he had never served in that role before.
The final report Autenrieth submitted to the court mirrors the structure of ChatGPT’s initial output, with large sections identical to the chatbot’s original draft and later revisions.
“This expert relied on AI not as an assistive device, but exclusively relied on ChatGPT to form his opinions and write his report,” Moye told 404 Media. “He acknowledged [at trial] the prompts he put in were biased toward 3M to help 3M win the case […] it’s really egregious.” Moye said many of the prompts were entered the night before Autenrieth’s deposition. “They hired him for the sole purpose of changing the outcome of the case. They hired him and he used ChatGPT to write these reports, so really, ChatGPT was the expert in the case. There’s just no question about that.”
Moye said 3M later tried to have Autenrieth disqualified from the trial. After learning the extent of his AI use, Moye instead called Autenrieth as his own witness. “I said, I’m calling you to trial because I need a jury to hear from you because this is bad, bad stuff. And that’s exactly what I did,” he said.
At trial, Autenrieth acknowledged using ChatGPT but defended his qualifications, saying, “I’ve got a body of work and 20-plus years of experience in the industry.” He said, “my opinions were put in there, and AI helped me to draft a straw man to build off of,” adding that “I put information and opinions in up front before it ever generated […] if the output wasn’t of my opinion or what I agreed to, I did alter it.” Under examination, Moye and Autenrieth agreed the submitted report was “90 to 85 percent ChatGPT.” Autenrieth also said he had prompted ChatGPT about the case while “sitting in traffic” to “jog my memory” about gas detector manufacturers.
The case demonstrates that ChatGPT transcripts can be obtained by opposing counsel through subpoena during discovery or depositions. “Every lawyer needs to make sure their own experts aren’t generating work product in a way that’s insincere,” Moye said, “and then knowing you can subpoena the prompts […] I’ve got lawyers all over the place saying, 1) ‘Holy shit, man. How did you get the prompts?,’ and 2) ‘How many cases do I have where this is happening to us?’”
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Read more at 404Media here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of AI, free speech, and online censorship.