Artificial Eloquence, Real Bills: The Rise of AI Lawsuits in Switzerland

Eloquence used to be an expensive commodity in the legal sphere. If a frustrated citizen wanted to launch a crusade against a neighbor, hiring an attorney to draft fifty pages of dense legalese cost a small fortune. Generative artificial intelligence has democratized that process. Today, anyone with a minor grievance and an internet connection can prompt software to spit out an impeccably structured criminal complaint in seconds.

Swiss prosecutors are now dealing with the consequences of this technological liberation. In cantons like Solothurn and Aargau, authorities report a rising number of criminal complaints written by AI. The language is polished and the layout looks authoritative, but the substance often degenerates into a bloated wasteland of repetition. Lukas Büttiker, deputy chief prosecutor in Solothurn, recently pointed to an actual 55-page complaint packed with dozens of evidentiary requests, most of them entirely unrealistic and irrelevant to criminal law.

Yet the Swiss state mechanism, dutiful to a fault, must process each submission seriously. Whether lodged in person at a police station, submitted through the official Suisse ePolice portal, or mailed directly to prosecutors, every filing requires administrative review. Adrian Schuler, media spokesperson for the Aargau prosecutor's office, resists calling it an unmanageable flood, noting that online templates existed long before generative AI. He even suggests the software might eventually cool down hot-headed citizens by advising them against pursuing petty neighbor disputes.

For the time being, citizens using AI as a cheap legal assistant are setting a costly trap for themselves. Laypeople lack the legal expertise to correct software hallucinations or trim redundant prose before hitting send. When filings inflate proceedings with frivolous demands, administrative workloads balloon. Under Swiss law, if a complaint fails to launch a criminal investigation or ends in an acquittal, the resulting administrative costs can be charged back to the complainant. Those hoping to outsmart the legal system with free software may end up paying handsomely for the privilege of submitting a fifty-page prompt.

Written by Christiane Hofreiter christiane.hofreiter@alpineweekly.com