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2 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 27 SEPTEMBER 2026 NEWS CONTINUES FROM PAGE 1 In its reply to this newspaper's questions, TM also remained si- lent on whether it had addressed its manual maritime fine system which was vulnerable to abuse. "The Authority fully cooperates with the relevant authorities, in- cluding the Malta Police Force, to ensure that any cases where there may have been a breach of the law are handled through the appropri- ate channels and in accordance with due process," a spokesperson said. Longstanding claims of abuse within maritime unit In 2024, MaltaToday revealed that senior TM officials were involved in a corruption racket in which they dropped maritime fines after pock- eting money from contraveners. At the time, the MEU issued fines through hand-written documents which would be kept solely by offi- cials. Sources within the authority had told MaltaToday that before certain infringement proceedings find their way to court, a TM official would approach the defendant and ask for a bribe that is significantly lower than the minimum fine they would otherwise incur. The unit's fine system was in such disarray that in 2021, at least 59% of its issued fines were "lost", while several fines levied by the MEU in 2022 and 2023 were never mailed to the offenders within the legally mandated time frame. An internal TM investigation into the missing and tampered fines was concluded and sent to the police in 2024. MaltaToday understands that the FCID's investigation was initiated on the basis of the transport author- ity's findings. TM's manual fine system open to abuse Kenneth Spiteri AI's growing pains ARTIFICIAL intelligence has made its way into Malta's courts, and not just through the odd submission whose phrasing gives away that friend Claude has been called in to lend a hand. This article is inspired by footnote 17 of a judgment I was reporting on a couple of weeks back. I might have skimmed past the tiny print altogeth- er had two words not jumped out at me: Artificial Intelligence. Judge Henri Mizzi was handing down judgment on a case involving more than €500,000 in donations by a charitable retired teacher in the years before she was declared legally inca- pable of managing her own affairs. Over half of the donations had to be refunded. One of the charities, NGO Movi- ment Ġesù fil-Proxxmu, had gone through the lengthy case, which was challenged on several fronts through the years, without ever saying that it was, in fact, a foundation. Yet, in its final submissions, it suddenly de- scribed itself as one. "In order to state, correctly, that Ġesù fil-Proxxmu is a foundation, it was necessary for evidence of this to be found in the acts," Judge Mizzi wrote. "The evidence is entirely lack- ing and, therefore, the submission should never have been made." He continued: "Outside Malta, many lawyers have been found guilty of contempt because, through the use of artificial intelligence, they made improper submissions, often by re- ferring to jurisprudence that the in- telligence had invented. This, and several similar cases, is an identical situation." The judge stopped short of calling it an AI hallucination, or finding the lawyer guilty of contempt. Which means Malta is still waiting for a such reckoning but the writing, as they say, is on the wall. The day an accused read a definition off ChatGPT Magistrate Donatella Frendo Di- mech showed rather less patience for former Labour Party Secretary Gen- eral Jimmy Magro's attempt to lean on artificial intelligence from the wit- ness stand in a bid to talk his way out of the corruption case against him. Magro's four-year and eight-month prison term for trading in influence was confirmed last April on appeal, ostensibly the first time in recent memory that a former senior political party official has been jailed for cor- ruption. Magro, who had solicited a €10,000 payment to ensure a bid would suc- ceed in a public tendering process, had been asked to explain what he meant by the expression "commercial take" in an email sent in 2014. Magro sneered at the Commission Against Corruption's definition of the term, saying it was interpreted as they saw fit from a clapped-out dic- tionary: A "dizzjunarju tan-19 xejn xejn." He said he had turned to "modern technology" to establish the mean- ing of "commercial take in business". The modern technology turned out to be ChatGPT 3.5. He then proceeded to read out, word-for-word, the rather robot- ic answer the chatbot had provided him with into the record: "In busi- ness, commercial take typically re- fers to the revenue or sale generated from commercial activities. It repre- sents the amount of money earned from selling products or services to customers. It is a key metric in as- sessing the financial performance and success of a business operation." The problem, as Magistrate Fren- do Dimech pointed out, was that ChatGPT did not exist at the date of the email. "When the accused is asked by his lawyer what he meant by the phrase 'commercial take', instead of answer- ing this question frankly, he incredi- ĦALEY XUEREB hxuereb@mediatoday.com.mt The term "artificial intelligence" has not cropped up that extensively before the Maltese courts, unlike its A hallucinating chatbot never doubts. It doesn't hesitate over a fabricated case citation and wonder, 'hang on, is this right?'

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