“I continue to believe—perhaps more so with each interaction—that LLMs have something to contribute to the ordinary-meaning endeavor. They’re not perfect, and challenges remain, but it would be myopic to ignore them.” —Judge Kevin Newsom
The decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit in Snell v. United Specialty Insurance Co. will be cited often for its holdings on policy interpretation and insurance applications under Alabama law. Perhaps the most groundbreaking analysis, likely to have long-term ramifications for insurance coverage litigation, was Judge Kevin Newsom’s concurring opinion addressing the role of AI large language models (LLMs) in policy interpretation. For the first time in a federal appellate decision, a judge openly explored whether ChatGPT, Bard/Gemini and similar AI tools could help courts interpret insurance policy language. His concurrence provides a roadmap for how AI may reshape insurance disputes, and where policyholders must tread carefully.