[Tostino]

This is a court issue, not a technical one. This has so many side effects that weren't thought through (Using Gmail to draft a letter to your attorney, but gmail has enabled AI editing...).

Seems dumb, and like it will cause quite a few issues until it is overturned.

[jcranmer]

Non-lawyer discussing their lawyer's communications with a third party has defeated attorney-client privilege for eons, and that's basically what happened here. Especially when you're sharing those communications with a third party who explicitly told you that they will share those communications with the government if the government asks. There's no reason to overturn this.

[mywittyname]

Well, calling Claude a "third-party communique" here is the stretch.

Say a person used Excel via Office 365 to run some calculations to be given to their lawyer for their defense. Is that considered to be "communicating with a third party?" I don't think so, it's just a computer tool.

We call them "chatbots" and anthropomorphize LLMs, but, despite the name of Claude's parent company, Claude is not a person.

[jcranmer]

> Well, calling Claude a "third-party communique" here is the stretch.

Why? The privacy policy explicitly says that when you're using it, you're sending your data to Anthropic.

> Say a person used Excel via Office 365 to run some calculations to be given to their lawyer for their defense. Is that considered to be "communicating with a third party?" I don't think so, it's just a computer tool.

Very possibly, actually. At the very least, I wouldn't assume that it's okay to do that without first consulting with a lawyer. I do know of at least one feature in Office (desktop, not the web version) that prompted lawyers to say "if you don't roll this back, we cannot legally use your product anymore and maintain attorney-client privilege." It depends a lot on the actual contractual agreements in the terms of service and privacy policy, and while I know most people don't read them, those things actually matter!

[breakpointalpha]

I'm sure there something in the hundreds of pages of Microsoft o365 about "we may share your data with third-parties" blah blah...

[nozzlegear]

Why would this be overturned? AI is not a lawyer, it can't have attorney-client privilege. In your scenario, you're sending an email to the attorney, not chatting with a chatbot about your case.

[ScoobleDoodle]

They’re saying it’s equivalent to writing a letter to their attorney in an online (Google) doc. Does that Google doc fall under attorney client privilege?

If so, then does a Google doc for your attorney written with Google AI auto enabled have attorney client privilege?

If so, the AI chats for figuring out what you want to say to your attorney would seem to fall under the same category. And so there is either a contradiction or an unintended widening of scope.

[nozzlegear]

Ah, it sounds like I don't understand how the Google AI works here. I thought it was just some kind of glorified auto-correct or maybe phrase suggestion at best.

[Tostino]

Exactly what I was trying to get at. Thanks.

[rcxdude]

Intent matters, though. Accidentally divulging information you intended to send to your attorney is one thing, but if you are deliberately sending it somewhere else it's something different entirely.