The office of the Kenosha, Wisconsin DA’s office, headed by Xavier Solis, sees dismissal of a case due to failure to disclose use of AI.
On February 6, 2026, a criminal case, alleged to be 2023CF001060, involving over 40 counts of burglary and theft, was reportedly dismissed due to the usage of AI in a filing that led to hallucinated case law.
Of course, my favorite part was the Reddit comments.
Public sentiment regarding skewed news reporting is at an all-time high.
For what it’s worth, I agree it’s a big deal. More and more we are seeing systems that cannot be trusted used in law and by law enforcement, and the media is not holding these systems, companies, and counties accountable through reporting. This is very much the same problem we’ve always had with regard to digital recording failures where things have gone terribly wrong in some places, but it just doesn’t make the news. And then the news doesn’t reach other decision makers who go on to make similarly horrible decisions for other jurisdictions. More and more lives, jobs, and dreams destroyed, because nobody cares about truth.
P.S.
This, perhaps, explains some of my outrage from when NCRA Strong was disbanded by Keith Lemons. Here you had society collectively ignoring problems with the implementation of recording and AI in our courts, and you had a group of volunteers proactively and on their own time recording these problems, and the solution was to purge that group from the organization and destroy that momentum.
If there was ever a simpler way to show that our institutions are bought and actively working against us in some cases.
But as long as they designate a week for you to celebrate yourselves, it’s cool, right?
Don’t get me wrong, everybody deserves to.
But I’d really like something to celebrate in ten years. Because we’re telling a lot of students there’s a future here, and absent legislative guardrails or proper investment, there might not be.
Again, I point to survivorship bias so prevalent in our field. “I made it, anyone can make it.” No, they can’t. We’ve lost real graduates because the field didn’t sustain them. And that was pre-AI and when digital was marginalized. That was before big money decided change was necessary.
And it would be so disrespectful for me not to share their story. Because it hints at something larger at play here. How did we go from not enough work, to not enough reporters, to not enough work to justify raises in the middle of what was forecasted to be an incredible shortage? 50% of all the jobs are supposed to be uncovered right now but it’s business as usual, maybe we have trouble covering a job here or there.
Truth be told, private sector New York got a little better for some people because others dropped out. Public sector has trouble recruiting in some areas. There’s more to be said, but maybe when my writing finally hits it big.™️
Sucks for me, really. I was good at messing with the fraudsters. They wised up and realized they didn’t have to lie to win. Most of them. Except maybe Naegeli. Jury’s still out. But then again if I had Naegeli’s business sense we wouldn’t be having these problems to begin with. Or ruthlessness? Are they one and the same?
I can’t help this feeling that it’s kind of like watching my son. Humans can get this big burst of energy just before a nice, long nap.
Are we living the burst of energy?
What’s that nap going to look like?
Or are we living the nap?
And it’s time to wake up?
Or maybe it’s just that human desire to make sense of the chaos of billions of stories being told every day.
Isn’t it interesting that the most fascinating stories are the ones we didn’t publish online?
Christopher Day addresses Court Reporter Rates Discussion Facebook Page after 20k reach post about there being no shortage.
The shortage post got a lot of reach. I’ve spent a lot of time documenting and commenting on the state and trajectory of the field. I know people are working hard and don’t have time to read hundreds of posts of modern court reporting market history.
And I honestly don’t want to alarm people, but I’ve always felt a duty to. Because the signs point clearly to lower incomes for the majority of our students absent some kind of intervention. If there’s something special about this field, it’s how we feel about our students. There you are, so many of you, giving dozens, hundreds, thousands of often unpaid hours to helping others succeed and navigate. I would be half the reporter I am today without the people who stood up for and supported me. And I would be double the reporter I am today if I had known half of you.
There’s a lot we can do. Unionization is on the table for some. A private enterprise that starts pulling in significant market share is on the table. Funding and cohesion can make these things a reality in a way that court reporting associations legally can’t. Do I know a guy in finance? Could I make it happen? Yeah. But I’d need significant buy-in from the community.
AI can be a powerful summarization tool. If you are skeptical, despite the negatives of AI, I have to ask you to use it. We can get through this with the best results possible for our students.
(The errors in the AI answer are an integral part of this piece.)
A cherished friend let me in on an article posted by JackimWoods & Co. it’s made its rounds on Facebook so I don’t expect it’ll be completely surprising to many of you. Let me go on record and say I respect Rich Jackim and the article, but I’d like to do a little bit of commentary on this one.
Right at the top, it’s written, “this transaction marks a decisive shift toward institutional-scale investment in AI-powered court reporting technology, signaling the beginning of a structural transformation that will fundamentally reshape the court reporting and legal support services sector within the next three to five years.” He’s not wrong that this is significant, but let’s not forget that For The Record was one of the companies represented on the Speech-to-Text Institute’s board. Rather than defend the organization or its fraudulent statements, For The Record and all the others let it collapse and flounder in the court case it was named in. And it was only three years ago that a For The Record transcript was called a deficit product in a high-profile case. I’ll just note generally, you have to see the guy has financial interests in the consolidation of the industry, so read it from that point of view.
But the fact remains that if big money is spending this much money consolidating the industry, that means they’ll be using their money to steer it a certain way. They have been using their money to steer it a certain way. That certain way is reducing the number of stenographer positions or pushing us into the role of transcribers, unseen, unheard, quietly correcting and/or certifying the AI’s work behind the scenes for a fraction of what we make today and a whole lot less autonomy.
Let me be really clear: You cannot skill your way out of this. This is economic warfare. This is us spending the next 10 years playing musical chairs while the big money collectively deletes stenographer seats one by one unless we start making moves. Moves like unionization. Our field has always thrived on a kind of survivorship bias. We watch this happen, it’s probably Armageddon. But at least the people who still have jobs at that point will be able to say “I made it.”
I’ll note also that people have been talking about the Veritext CEU webinar last night. Finally Veritext came out and said it, “digital is equal, we get 3,000 applicants a month and we accept 2% of those.” This is what I heard. Do I know the truth? No. Veritext habitually lies and abuses the trust of reporters. Do I blame Andrea Wecker, their current front person? Nope. She’s probably made the same exact calculation, and wants to be able to say “I made it.”
I’m exploring some ideas as to what to do about it all. I’m AI-powered too these days, so we’ve got a shot (joke).
Long-time users of the site may have noticed a little change recently. There’s an annoying speech bubble on the bottom right of the site now.
The speech bubble at the bottom right gives you access to Stenonymous bot.
Finally, a place to ask the important questions, like “Is Chris Day a nutjob communist?” I’ve spent a small amount of time training this thing, so it’s ready for the hard questions.
Bonus points if you get it to flip out and say something deluded.
Feel free to copy and paste your chats into the comments or send me funny screenshots via email and social media. I’m sure we can have a laugh at the expense of the environment before it inevitably breaks and I disable it.
I’ll just ask that if it entertains you for any appreciable length of time, please drop a donation on the front page of Stenonymous.com. I know one glorious reader knows, these things don’t come cheap.
Lots of us have been doing the ChatGPT caricatures on Facebook. On the one hand, for me at least, it’s always interesting to see what the machine puts out. On the other hand, some people point to the waste of resources these AI data centers are or can be. The discussion rolls pretty deep.
I, myself, have come to a point where I’ll use AI for entertainment and, if the chance ever arises, success. Though in its current form I don’t see how AI could boost us on the record beyond what companies like Stenograph and Advantage are already doing. And the results, from what I’ve been hearing, are pretty mixed.
Maybe that makes me unimaginative. I’ll have to think about it.
That, alongside Andrew’s comment on the post (thanks for reading, Andrew!), compel me to explain that though I personally believe AI has some value, and though I believe we will eventually be ousted by attrition barring definitive action on our part (like me raising about $3 million to pour on a school and some media action! Dreamers can dream, can’t they?) — I still acknowledge that the colossal amount of money being spent on AI is likely to result in a big bubble burst and potentially cause another AI Winter.
And though I don’t intend to make a habit of using AI generated stuff on my website, I once again let AI do some googling for me just to see what it might say.
Is there an AI bubble in terms of investing and can it lead to an AI winter?
I’ll search for current information about AI investment trends and concerns about a potential bubble or AI winter. Now let me search for information specifically about AI winter risks: Based on the search results, here’s what the current situation looks like:
Yes, there are significant bubble concerns
AI investment as a share of the economy is nearly a third greater than internet-related investments during the dotcom bubble, and many experts are warning about bubble-like conditions. Even OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has acknowledged that investors as a whole are “overexcited about AI,” though he maintains AI remains fundamentally important.
Key warning signs include:
Over 1,300 AI startups now have valuations exceeding $100 million, with 498 “unicorns” valued at $1 billion or more
Tech companies are projected to spend about $400 billion this year on AI infrastructure
Circular revenue deals between major players like OpenAI, Nvidia, and Microsoft, where these companies are simultaneously investors in and customers of each other
OpenAI is losing billions annually while making massive investment commitments, with projected revenues of only $13 billion against deals worth around $1 trillion
Could it lead to an AI winter?
The picture is more nuanced here. The IMF’s chief economist predicts that while a bust is possible, it would be less likely to be a systemic event that would crater the US or global economy, since AI investment is financed by cash-rich tech companies rather than debt.
However, an MIT report revealed that 95% of enterprise generative AI programs are failing or returning no measurable value, which suggests the practical applications aren’t yet living up to the hype.
The key difference from past AI winters: Unlike previous AI winters, companies like Google, Amazon, and Microsoft that survived the dotcom crash are now the primary AI investors, and they’re already profitable with strong fundamentals. This suggests any correction might be less catastrophic than historical AI winters.
While some companies will likely collapse under unsustainable economics, AI itself won’t disappear—it’s evolving toward more practical, specialized systems rather than mega-models. So we might see a market correction and consolidation rather than a complete “winter” where AI research grinds to a halt.
Back to Christopher Day, the author of most posts on Stenonymous.com
In short, it’s not the technology that’s going to kill us. More likely than not it’s the shortage exaggerated and exacerbated by the Speech-to-Text Institute and the large court reporting companies. For example, when U.S. Legal used its money to buy and kill Stenotrain and proceeded to bet everything on digital, or when Veritext built Blue Ledge into its pipeline instead of, say, using its money and power to create a stenographic program and build that into its pipeline. More or less, they saw an opportunity to bump out the “overpaid” stenographers, and they took it. And that’s what I spent the last few years documenting.
With some words on the internet and $10,000 from readers like you, we dismantled the fraudulent STTI, publishing again and again that they were using outdated, unadjusted figures to make their claims. We ended up informing thousands of potential jobseekers that digital was not the best way to get into court reporting. To this day I get emails and comments about various fraudsters in our industry. I’m one guy. There are 17,000 to 30,000 of us. That’s a whole lot of potential and brainpower.
So, I still hold out some hope we’ll do something special and reverse the course. My favorite Latin phrase is, after all, a posse ad esse, “from possibility to actuality.“
I’ve written extensively about AI and ASR, and in particular how ASR could cause further delays in court record production. I’m sure entering the terms AI or ASR into the search box at Stenonymous.com will reveal plenty of the opinions and facts I’ve recorded over the years.
Truth be told, though, with clean enough audio, it’s also my firm belief that ASR can work the other way, producing a usable first draft of a court transcript. Sorry, but, from what I’ve seen, this is likely true. The catch is that, short of having a professional tech onboard to make sure the audio is coming in clean, you often won’t have the cleanest audio in depositions and courtrooms even under the best circumstances with fully willing participants.
I’d like to take a moment to acknowledge the prevalent form of AI today, the LLM or generative chatbot or whatever you want to call it. When I was a kid, the closest thing we had to it was SmarterChild. Now there’s ChatGPT, Grok, etc.
And they have no problem killing people, because in America’s rush to see what this technology can do, we didn’t bother to put effective guardrails on the damn things.
Now, I’ll be the first to admit that there are great use cases for these glorified chatbots. They can give pretty accurate information. Like when I asked Grok what Stenonymous.com is.
Grok’s response to “What is Stenonymous.com?”
But again, I’d like to take the time to mention that there will be casualties. These chatbots, for better or worse, tend to validate the feelings of the user. For the mentally ill, they can validate and enhance delusions. For the young, as we’ve seen, they can encourage suicide.
I am but one voice. But I say legislate. We need legislative guardrails on this technology. We need legislators to stop looking away from what they don’t understand and start understanding that the world is different now and the needs of society are great. Technology must be kept up with by lawmakers.
But I have very little hope. I’ve seen the executive branch fail at fighting the most obvious and documented corporate fraud, right up until the executive branch became enslaved to wealthy interests through The New Emperor. The Supreme Court is enslaved to wealthy interests through open bribery. The Congress is enslaved to wealthy interests through the Citizens United ruling. We have very serious problems in America.
At the end of the day, I can only hope that you’re doing as well as me, reader. Or better. I’ll continue to use my voice.
But for now a moment of silence for all the unsung victims of AI.
That’s exactly what this article, sent to me by a valued Stenonymous reader, raises.
This has been my position for some time. We could be sitting in a bubble ready to pop. You’d never know it because the tech-heads have enough money to create spin media all day, every day for the next 100 years.
I’ve written countless times about this kind of stuff. It boils down to AI is a solvable problem. Solving a problem does not inherently make money, nor does it necessarily make enough money to justify its existence. This was the issue I had with it being forced on us by our manufacturers too. ASR has a much more viable moneymaking model (replacing us). It’s struggling to do that with all the millions and billions invested in ASR in the last 20 or 30 years. And in an industry that’s only about 3 billion a year, what are they really gaining?
Pyrrhic victory scenario, really. There are all these overblown estimates of the market for speech recognition being $50 billion by 2029 or whatever, but we’ve been in the speech recognition game for like 200 years. Court reporting market’s like 3. Captioning market’s like 6. Where’s all the other money from “speech recognition” going to come from? We already have automated customer service and the like. Why would companies pay more for a fancier version?
Maybe somebody with an inside line can come in and comment.
I blew some money on a month of Dall-E. I think I can sum up modern AI’s benefit in a simple statement — speed over quality. What do I mean?
It shits the bed with anything having to do with words.
I mean, it’s really bad.
It does okay when you stop asking it to do words.
But notably, it doesn’t know how tridents are held or what stenotypes look like.
If you give it vague instructions, it asks you to clarify, which is pretty cool.
But the results are a little dystopian.
How many stenographers does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
All in all, I had fun. I can see a future for this kind of tech, but it’s nowhere near replacing dedicated artists from what I’ve seen. The amount of prompting you need to give it to get usable images is… well… it turns me right off.
I will post without commentary this time*. These words are from Sue Terry and posted with permission as given in the post itself.
As posted to the Steno Intelligence Facebook Group
Good morning, everyone. I indicated that I would respond on the weekend regarding the recent decision that the NCRA Strong Committee would cease to exist.
It’s a bit perplexing to us to hear that we will soon have increased advocacy working for us, as Keith has indicated, particularly at a time when the budget is so lean and the Strong Committee has been self-funding our activities, as you will see in the list of activities below. But we will as members anxiously await the announcement of those plans just like all of you.
I’m only active in a few Facebook groups, and you can feel free to copy/paste my words in other groups you may belong to.
I want to thank everyone for the support you’ve given the Strong Committee through many years, and for your texts, messages, calls, events we’ve shared with you, etc. While it has been a lot of work for all of us on Strong, it’s been well worth the additional friendships we’ve made through our service.
As I just posted on the Leaders listserv, the Strong Committee’s work has always been rooted in integrity and commitment to the NCRA membership, and more importantly, to our professional colleagues. I think you can see if you take time to view just some of our work below, it has never been about personal gain or agenda. I think any organization would be happy to have volunteers like this, but apparently there’s something much better coming than we’ve been offering.
While we are quite saddened at this development, we fully intend to regroup, of course, and will now support our beloved profession outside the walls of the association to the best of our ability.
We don’t know yet what that’s going to look like, but we don’t sit and wring our hands much. And there’s likely some of our competitors thinking this is a good kind of dream; well, think again. We are now free of constraints and will be able to push information out with a little more agility than in the past. We are Free.
I’d like to recap some of what our committee has achieved for you through the last couple of years. It’s by no means an exhaustive list since none of us kept a running list, but I think you’ll see we’ve done our job as unpaid volunteers. And just remember, “Strong” has never been about the name, it’s about the people and the advocacy.
Here is a rundown of what we’ve contributed in recent memory:
Most recent this week that was a fantastic experience:
*Joining ABA as an interested member to get their emails, offerings and what’s happening in their world. Several days ago, our committee members attended a webinar on AI in the justice system that the ABA gave. Imagine this: they acknowledged the presence of so many court reporters during the meeting, and their valuable input was welcomed. I have also watched all of their “free” bar continuing education webinars on AI/courts. So much information to share in due time.
Elevator Pitches for members.
Keeping members informed about ABA Resolutions and Guidelines.
In 2019 or early ‘20, suggested an AI Bill of Rights or Disclosure Bill, to require disclosure if a transcript was processed with ASR. (We are excited to see it’s now finally on the table.)
Supported members with information to combat a proposed push requesting federal judges to electronically record more of their trials.
Compiled a database of every state bar association to enable flow of information.
The NCRA White Paper has been cited by CNBC, Reuters, NextGov, and others.
Channel 2 Dayton news story with Kristin and I regarding the NCRA White Paper and dangers to the justice system posed by AI.
State flyers.
Video series on YouTube channel for members to use, all captioned by Strong.
Letter to US Senate Judiciary Committee for a hearing on AI use in judicial systems nationwide.
Letters to Indiana, both personal and on behalf of Strong.
Letters to Tennessee, both personal and on behalf of Strong.
Letters to Washington on sunsetting, personal and on behalf of Strong.
Other Presentations and Tasks:
Montana Bar Association.
Colorado CRA.
Zoom webinars during Pandemic to move to remote.
Quarterly articles in Journal and often in the Weekly.
Privacy webinar.
Created other webinars for the NCRA store.
Drafted NCRA Resolution which was released ahead of the American Bar Association, who then adopted their own similar resolution.
Stenopalooza.
Spring Fling.
Powerpoints created for member use.
Powerpoints created for board use to present Strong.
Updated the Tech Powerpoint the board gives at their request.
Lisa Mig drove to Sue’s to do a mini-boot camp for Texas leaders (4-hour drive each way)
Lisa Mig drove to Kim Falgiani’s, 7-hour trip each way involving an overnight hotel stay to appear with Kim for a TV interview on AI dangers in broadcast captioning and courts.
Remote and in-person presentations for Steno in the City.
Ilinois Bar Presentation to their Board of Governors (Phyllis).
San Francisco Legal Professionals
presentation at their request.
Washington Court Reporters Association presentation.
Ohio (‘21, ‘22, ‘23 and ‘24)
State Leaders Webinar on Strong Education.
Oregon Court Reporters Association presentation.
CALDRA presentation.
California Court Reporters Association presentation.
Steno in the City presentation.
NCSA meeting in Las Vegas presentation.
NCRA Convention in Orlando presentation.
Utah CRA.
Massachusetts Court Reporters Association.
Provided assistance/brainstorming Zoom sessions/letters – Arizona, Texas, Indiana (before they dissolved the association,) Illinois,
Connecticut, Minnesota, Tennessee, Nebraska preparing for elimination of jobs and raise issues.
Alaska presentation.
Many one-on-one calls for support by all the Strong team, requiring additional evenings, weekends.
Youtube video series of judges/court admins, audio forensic expert, privacy and captioning all videos.
Series of meetings with privacy expert.
Captioned the Murdaugh FTR trial clip.
Phyllis worked with “Free” audio forensic, former FBI experts, Doug Lacey and Bruce Koenig (Bek Tek LLC), who contributed to some of our self-education, work and white paper.
Work with audio forensic expert, Ed Primeau, to produce videos on alterations
Ohio Supreme Court.
Stenocat Users Network seminars.
Each Strong member spent at least four hours a week doing research, and then met every other
Sunday evening for 2-4 hours to discuss research, projects, requests, strategies, etc., upcoming articles, and a few invited guests when needed.
Liz and I as Strong worked with Max Curry in the revamp of NCSA by digging into our own old files to reinvent the history of NCSA, which was obliterated by a previous CEO, along with many of the historical documents where members could go to archives and educate themselves on the path and history of the association.
Expenditures off the top of my head by our Strong Committee out of pocket:
Software to caption our own videos and some
of NCRA’s videos $225.00 a year, two years now.
Software for live polls during webinars $210 year, two years now.
Joined IAPP (International Association of Privacy Professionals and signed up for their privacy bar emails, and that’s where much of the AI bills information and charts that I’ve forwarded to states comes from, three years of dues for that at $250 a year.
Attended Legalweek in NY (Registration, Air, Hotel, etc., cost of approximately $2,000 and also gave a full report of that experience and threats to our livlihoods and the major players threatening us to the board in a written report.)
Attended multiple court technology conferences to be able to ask pertinent questions of court recording vendors during presentations, and that’s been multiple members of Strong when the technology conferences are near them.
Boot Camp – Stacey Raikes and I both paid our own air and hotel for Boot Camp at a dent to our personal budgets of another approximately $2,000.00 each and additional days off calendar.
When we were provided a booth at our annual conference to meet and greet with members. Stacey bought a monitor to have at our booth for streaming the videos we had produced for all of you, and also provided snacks we passed out, and a life-sized cutout for “Strong selfies” for members. She wouldn’t share how much she spent or let us contribute.
Court Technology Conference this past year: NCRA did provide a table for us at CTC, and it was a very costly spot. We much appreciated that expenditure. In addition to their expenditure, Debbie, Stacey and I also funded our own air travel and took vacation days from our work schedules to man the booth, stocked the booth with candies and goodies, and also outfitted the best-looking booth there, complete with banners, etc., all paid for by us (Debbie mostly on this one). I’ve been to a lot of court technology shows, but our booth at this one was one of the most popular and we were handing out our information constantly due to our focus on AI with our tag line of “Can You Trust AI Beyond a Reasonable Doubt?” I do hope the new people are going to self-fund at the level we did, considering the reported budget shortfalls.
In closing, thanks for the many messages of thanks of support we’ve received this week, along with offers to help. Thanks to Kimberly D’Urso and Kelly Bryce Shainline for your support, too. It means a lot coming from two great leaders. Please, friends, keep your states strong (pun intended) at this pivotal point in our profession and do what you feel is necessary to urge – no, demand – that the organization that has been so crucial to our justice system continues to fight for us. If you don’t belong to your state association, please join today. If you can afford it, join a neighboring one, too. Lets, please, please, please, keep our state associations strong. Membership deserves nothing less. Business as usual shouldn’t be an option for any of us. Our profession deserves everyone’s best efforts.
Sue
————-
Back to Chris Day.
Perhaps I will make one comment.
This is how the National Court Reporters Association treats its most fervent volunteers. People admittedly willing to spend thousands of dollars of their own money for a greater good and spreading awareness to the world about the research we’ve done.
How much do you think it respects you for your membership dues?
How much do you think it respects non-members of the profession?
It’s likely a simple calculation. The vendors want AI. They’re going AI. NCRA can’t have a committee making so much ground on AI awareness. We’re talking more media and legal profession attention than I could’ve dreamed. Look at Sue’s list again.
Those vendors are more important than the truth.
Those vendors are more important than your jobs.
What’re you going to do about it?
It’s time for a new national association. And if you like that idea, stay tuned for updates later in the year.
*The asterisk represents a liepushed for dramatic effect.
——-
P.S.
So it came to be that everyone could see what I see.
