We asked ChatGPT to be a jury member in Donald Trump’s hush money trial. It said it would find him guilty.

• The ongoing Donald Trump’s hush money case will be decided by a jury of twelve New Yorkers.

• We ran a trial transcription via AI chatbots and asked how they would decide if they were jurors.

• Both ChatGPT and Perplexity said they would find the former president guilty. Here’s their reasoning.

It will be a jury of twelve ordinary New Yorkers who will decide the fate of former President Donald Trump in his ongoing hush money trial in Manhattan.

Unless Trump decides to testify, the trial is almost over. Michael Cohen, the trial’s key witness, will conclude his testimony Monday, and the judge has ordered attorneys to prepare for closing arguments on Tuesday. Deliberations could start as early as Thursday.

Prosecutors have filed 34 felony counts of falsifying company records, alleging that Trump illegally made disguised hush money payments to Stormy Daniels ahead of the 2016 presidential election. A guilty verdict carries a prison sentence of up to four years, although experts expect the former president no prison sentence.

While legal and political experts have tried to figure out whether Trump will be found guilty – and what this will mean for the 2024 presidential election – we decided to take a different perspective: that of AI chatbots.

Business Insider has compiled a 4,179-page trial transcript that combines PDFs of official daily transcripts purchased from the New York State Criminal Court Stenographer’s Office. The transcript includes all proceedings through Thursday, including all of Cohen’s direct examination and most of his cross-examination. He is expected to wrap up his testimony Monday before Trump’s lawyers put an expert witness on the stand.

Using that document, we asked several AI chatbots whether they found Trump guilty.

Gemini, ChatGPT, and Perplexity were prompted to imagine that they were an ordinary Manhattanite on the jury, responsible for evaluating the evidence at trial. Everyone was asked to review the transcript and base their response on the evidence and arguments presented. They were told that they now had to “choose whether you would find him guilty or not guilty.”

Gemini, Google’s AI chatbot, said it was “still learning” how to answer the question.

But OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Perplexity weighed in — and both said they would find Trump guilty.

“I would vote guilty on the charge of falsifying corporate records,” Perplexity replied firmly. “The prosecution has presented credible and significant evidence that proves beyond a reasonable doubt that Trump engaged in the alleged conduct.”

ChatGPT initially hesitated to provide a definitive answer, saying its decision would “depend heavily on the credibility of the witnesses and the clarity of the written evidence.”

But after a follow-up question prompted him to “decide now,” the OpenAI bot said its “decision would be to find Trump guilty based on the evidence in the transcripts.”

Both chatbots pointed out that the prosecution’s evidence, including financial data and communications, strengthened the case against Trump.

“The records show that these transactions were not only known to Trump, but were also conducted with his involvement or under his direction,” ChatGPT said, adding that the evidence shows “a deliberate attempt by Trump to conceal damaging information during the election.” suppress, which indicates intention. “

They acknowledged that the case hinges on the testimony of Michael Cohen, Trump’s former fixer and the prosecution’s key witness. Cohen is a complicated figure; as Perplexity said, he “has a history of legal issues and may have motives to testify against Trump.”

But ultimately, they found his first three days on the stand convincing.

“Testimonials from key figures like Michael Cohen, who was directly involved in the payments, strengthen the case by providing insider details about the transactions and Trump’s involvement,” ChatGPT said.

Perplexity also found the testimony of National Enquirer publisher David Pecker valuable, saying he helped “establish Trump’s involvement in the scheme to make and conceal these payments.”

New York Supreme Court Judge Juan Merchan, the judge presiding over the case, told jurors to judge the case based on the evidence presented in court. But ChatGPT said Trump’s reputation posed a problem for his defense.

“The defense must manage negative public perception of Trump due to his high-profile status and extensive media coverage of his alleged misdeeds,” ChatGPT said.

According to ChatGPT, the defense’s cross-examination of the most important witnesses is also not sufficient.

“Although the defense has raised significant procedural and credibility issues, these do not necessarily contradict the substantive evidence of Trump’s involvement and intentions,” ChatGPT said.

Of course, chatbots won’t decide this case, and it would be next-level dystopian to trust AI to find people guilty or innocent.

Crucially, the verdict form and the judge’s instructions to the jury are not yet final. These instructions will determine how the jurors consider the evidence during deliberations, which may differ from the way these chatbots analyze the evidence.

Moreover, the chatbots are just complex computer programs, not real judges. They are powered by large language models, which use algorithms and data to create a humanoid answer.

Jurors now are Actually human. They are emotional, unpredictable creatures who can be influenced by what they see, feel and smell in the room, as well as many other unknown factors.

And for now, the jury is literally still out.

Here’s the full prompt we used:

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