A defendant in a New York appeals court has been slammed by a judge for using an artificial intelligence avatar to represent himself in a recent case. 

A New York appeals court faced an unusual situation in late March when Jerome Dewald, representing himself in an employment dispute, submitted an AI-generated avatar to present his legal arguments via video, a livestream of the hearing shows. 

It’s the latest example of artificial intelligence tools trickling their way into courtrooms. 

Within seconds of the video starting, Justice Sallie Manzanet-Daniels called for it to stop, asking whether the avatar was counsel for the case. 

“I generated that,” 74-year-old Dewald responded, adding, “That is not a real person.”

The judge appeared displeased, retorting, “It would have been nice to know that when you made your application,” stating that the defendant had previously appeared before the court and been able to testify verbally in the past. 

“I don’t appreciate being misled,” the judge added. 

She asked the defendant if he was suffering from an ailment that prevented him from articulating before adding, “You are not going to use this courtroom as a launch for your business,” and then yelling, “Shut that off,” pointing to the video screen. 

Appellate Division, First Department Stream. Source: YouTube

Dewald later apologized, explaining he thought the AI avatar would deliver his arguments more eloquently than he could.

Speaking to The Associated Press, Dewald said he applied to the court for permission to play a prerecorded video, then used a San Francisco tech company to create the AI avatar. 

He originally tried to generate a digital replica of himself but was prevented by time constraints before the hearing. “The court was really upset about it,” Dewald conceded, adding, “They chewed me up pretty good.”

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AI entering the legal world

The incident highlights growing challenges as AI enters the legal world. 

In 2023, a New York lawyer was blasted for citing fake cases generated by ChatGPT in a legal brief as part of a lawsuit against a Columbian airline.

In March, Arizona’s Supreme Court began using two AI-generated avatars, similar to the one that Dewald used in New York, to summarize court rulings for the public.

In September, the US Federal Trade Commission took action against companies it claimed misled consumers using AI, including a firm that offered an AI lawyer.

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The Bitcoin network hashrate has topped 1 Zetahash per second (ZH/s) for the first time in Bitcoin’s 16-year history, according to several blockchain data sources.

Bitcoin’s hashrate crossed the milestone on April 5 at a peak of 1.025 ZH/s, according to mempool.space data, while BTC Frame data said it hit 1.02 ZH/s a day earlier.

Data from Coinwarz says that Bitcoin hashrate soared to as high as 1.1 ZH/s on April 4 at block height 890,915 — however, the same data indicates that Bitcoin first crossed 1 ZH/s on March 24.

Bitcoin’s hashrate has fallen back below 0.95 ZH/s on April 7 since reaching 1 ZH/s. Source: BTC Frame

Discrepancy in Bitcoin hashrate trackers 

The differences result from the varying approaches used to calculate hashrate — such as when block times and difficulty adjustments are measured, which Bitcoin nodes and miner pools are used to pull data from and more.

Bitcoin cypherpunk Jameson Lopp also previously pointed out that estimating Bitcoin’s hashrate with one “trailing block” as opposed to five can result in a difference of over 0.04 ZH/s.

“Viewing the raw Hashrate metric can be deceiving due to random variations in block times,” added Blockware Solutions head analyst Mitchell Askew, who pointed out that Bitcoin’s 30-day moving average hashrate is still around 0.845 ZH/s mark in a note to Cointelegraph.

Notching 1 ZH/s is a massive network achievement

Despite the discrepancies, the feat highlights the massive amount of computational power and increasing decentralization of the Bitcoin network, making it more secure than ever and significantly reducing the likelihood of a 51% attack.

The Bitcoin network’s reported rise to 1 ZH/s — equivalent to 1,000 Exahashes per second — marks a 1,000x increase since late January 2016, when Bitcoin first hit 1 EH/s for the first time. 

The second-largest proof-of-work crypto network, Litecoin, currently boasts a hashrate of 2.49 Petahashes per second according to Coinwarz — making it around 40,000 times less computationally powerful than Bitcoin.

Source: Pierre Rochard

Askew noted that the huge rise in hashrate has coincided with more commercial Bitcoin mining firms competing to solve Bitcoin blocks in recent years.

“Miners are doubling down: expanding sites and plugging in more efficient machines,” Askew said, adding that less efficient miners could soon be washed out unless Bitcoin’s (BTC) price rallies again in the coming months.

MARA Holdings is the largest Bitcoin miner with more than 50 EH/s of compute power, while the largest share of hashrate is channeled to Bitcoin mining pools Foundry USA Pool and AntPool, according to the Hashrate Index.

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At least 24 publicly listed Bitcoin companies have machines set up to mine Bitcoin, according to CompaniesMarketCap.com. 

Among the other large miners contributing hashrate are Riot Platforms, Core Scientific, CleanSpark, Hut 8 Mining and TeraWulf.

Bitcoin’s hashrate soars as BTC plummets on recession fears

The new all-time high in Bitcoin hashrate came in the middle of a sharp market downturn — with Bitcoin (BTC) falling nearly 10% over the last four days to $78,750, while US stocks saw an estimated $6.6 trillion loss on April 3 and 4 — the largest two-day loss ever.

Much of the fall has been attributed to US President Donald Trump’s tariff plans, which many industry analysts say are sparking recession fears.

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Alon Cohen, co-founder of the Solana-based memecoin launchpad Pump.fun, is set to bring back live streaming on the platform — five months after suspending the feature after several incidents involving harmful content. 

Posting on X on April 4, Cohen said the feature has returned with “industry standard moderation systems in place and transparent guidelines.” He said it had been rolled out to just 5% of users. 

Source: Alon Cohen

Pump.fun’s website describes the purpose of its new live-streaming moderation policy as being “to cultivate a social environment on pump fun that preserves creativity and freedom of expression and encourages meaningful engagement amongst users, free of illegal, harmful, and negative interactions.”

Breaches of the moderation policy could see creators having their livestreams and Pump.fun accounts terminated. 

The policy prohibits certain types of content, including violence, animal abuse, pornography and youth endangerment. However, it also creates ambiguity by claiming that “pump fun does not intend to universally define what content is ‘appropriate’ or ‘inappropriate.’” 

“There is an implicit assumption that some content — perhaps much content — generally defined as NSFW will in fact appear on pump fun,” Pump.fun’s moderation policy states. 

The platform added it reserves the right to “unilaterally determine the appropriateness of content where necessary and to moderate it accordingly.”

Live-streaming return comes as memecoin market crumbles

Pump.fun removed its live-streaming feature last November after it became awash with extreme content as memecoin creators turned to increasingly shocking tactics to promote their tokens. 

Some users were allegedly threatening violence or self-harm if a token didn’t reach a price goal.

The platform said its unprecedented growth had put a strain on its moderators, and that it would pause the live-streaming functionality indefinitely to ensure the safety of its users “until the moderation infrastructure is ready to deal with the heightened levels of activity.”

At the time, Mikko Ohtamaa, co-founder of algorithmic trading firm Trading Strategy, said that if Pump.fun continued to allow live-streaming without appropriate moderation, it would quickly be shut down once a mainstream audience became aware of what was going on.

“I advocate for freedom of speech, but these streams are causing practical issues where people are breaking the law in live broadcasts. This will trigger a shutdown when the mainstream media catches a wind on this,” Ohtamaa said.

Pump.fun’s decision to reintroduce its live-streaming feature comes as interest in memecoins has been down significantly following a series of high-profile rug pulls such as Libra (LIBRA) and Melania Meme (MELANIA). That’s coupled with the poor price performance of tokens like Trump (TRUMP) — which, according to CoinGecko, is now down over 90% from its January highs.

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Data from Dune Analytics showed in March that the graduation rate for tokens launched on Pump.fun — that is, the percentage of tokens that achieve a large enough market cap to become tradable on a regular decentralized exchange — had fallen to under 1%, down from highs of around 1.67%. 

Combined with a sharp drop in the number of tokens being launched on the platform, this has seen the total number of tokens graduating from highs of around 5,400 per week in January to under 1,500 in March.

The number of tokens launched on the Solana network has also fallen dramatically overall. Only 31,651 launched on April 5, according to Solscan, less than one-third of the 95,578 created at the peak of the memecoin frenzy on Jan. 26.

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