Can ChatGPT Defend My Criminal Charges?

If you have been charged with a criminal offence, there is a good chance you have already asked ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini about it. That is understandable. These tools are fast, free and patient, and they can explain the basics of Canadian criminal law surprisingly well. The question is whether they can do what a defence lawyer does. They cannot, and the reason has less to do with how intelligent the tools are than with what they have been able to learn.

What AI Is Genuinely Good At

Large language models learn from enormous amounts of published text. Canadian criminal law has a lot of published text: the Criminal Code, the Charter, Supreme Court of Canada decisions, court guides, government pages, textbooks and legal commentary.

So an AI tool can usually do a reasonable job of:

• explaining what a charge means and what the Crown has to prove;
• describing the stages of a criminal case, from first appearance to trial;
• defining terms like disclosure, bail, peace bond or conditional discharge;
• summarizing well-known cases such as R. v. Jordan on delay or R. v. Grant on excluding evidence.

Used that way, as a starting point for understanding, AI can help you ask better questions. We would rather a client arrive having read something than knowing nothing.

But “explaining the law” and “defending a charge” are different jobs.

The Knowledge That Decides Cases Was Never Published

Most of what determines the outcome of a criminal case in Ontario is not written down anywhere an AI could have read it.

Most Cases Never Reach a Judgment

The overwhelming majority of criminal cases end without a trial. The Supreme Court of Canada has described resolution discussions as “commonplace and vitally important,” noting that joint submissions “help to resolve the vast majority of criminal cases in Canada” (R. v. Anthony-Cook, 2016 SCC 43). Statistics Canada’s adult criminal court data show that about a third of cases end with the charges stayed or withdrawn, and only a few percent end in an acquittal after trial.

Those outcomes are negotiated between Crown and defence, often with a judge, in discussions that are not published. In the Superior Court, for example, pre-trial conferences “shall be closed to the public” under the court’s Criminal Proceedings Rules. Nothing from those rooms becomes training data.

Local Practice Changes Constantly

How a particular Crown office approaches a first-time impaired driving charge, what a court usually does with a breach of conditions, which diversion programs are actually available in your courthouse this year, and how a particular kind of case tends to resolve: this is the practical knowledge defence lawyers use every day. Lawyers sometimes call it the local “tariff”.

It differs between Barrie, Newmarket and Toronto. It shifts when Crown policies change, when new programs open, and when courthouses are under different pressures. It lives in the experience of people who are in those courtrooms every week, and in conversations between lawyers that are never recorded. An AI model trained on public text, often months or years old, has no way to know it.

Case Law Shows the Edges, Not the Middle

Even the published law can mislead. Reported decisions tend to deal with unusual facts and contested legal questions, because routine cases rarely produce written reasons worth reporting. Reading case law to predict an ordinary result is like reading appeal decisions about car accidents to learn how to drive. We explain this in more detail in What Case Law Doesn’t Tell You About Your Criminal Case.

An Example: When the Complainant Wants the Charge Dropped

Take a common situation. Someone is charged with domestic assault, and a few weeks later the complainant tells them she wants the charge withdrawn.

Ask an AI tool about this and it will probably give you a correct general answer: in Canada, the decision to prosecute belongs to the Crown, not the complainant, and a complainant’s wish to drop the charge does not end the case by itself. Our article on offside complainants covers the same ground.

What the tool cannot tell you is what matters next:

• how the Crown office handling your case usually responds when a complainant recants, and what it will want to see before considering a withdrawal or a peace bond;
• whether your no-contact condition can realistically be varied, and how long that tends to take in your courthouse;
• how the complainant’s earlier statement could still be used at trial, and whether the circumstances of that statement give the defence anything to work with;
• what the risks are of having any contact, even friendly contact, while your release conditions forbid it.

Those answers depend on the facts in your disclosure and on current local practice. They are exactly the conversation to have with a lawyer, and exactly the facts you should not be typing into a chatbot.

Where AI Can Help, Used Carefully

None of this means AI is useless to someone facing a charge. Used for general questions, it can help you:

• understand legal terms in your paperwork before you meet your lawyer;
• prepare a list of questions for your consultation;
• learn how the court process works, so the first appearance is less intimidating.

The line is between learning about the law and making decisions about your case. The first is fine. The second needs someone who knows your file, your courthouse, and the people in it.

AI Gets Things Wrong, Confidently

AI tools can produce answers that sound authoritative and are simply wrong: invented case names, outdated sections, or rules from American law presented as Canadian. Courts have had to deal with fake citations generated by AI in filed documents. Ontario’s Superior Court of Justice now has a practice direction on the use of artificial intelligence in criminal proceedings that applies to “counsel and litigants”, requiring careful oversight and verification of anything cited, and warning of sanctions including public reprimand.

Criminal law is also changing quickly. Canada’s bail provisions, for example, were amended again in 2026. A model trained before a change will explain the old law with complete confidence.

If you are self-represented, you, not the chatbot, are responsible for anything you put before the court.

AI Cannot Do What a Lawyer Actually Does

Even with perfect legal knowledge, an AI tool cannot:

• speak to the Crown about withdrawing or reducing a charge;
• appear for you in court or at a judicial pre-trial;
• cross-examine a witness, reading their answers and adjusting in real time;
• assess credibility, including how a complainant or officer is likely to come across;
• protect your communications with solicitor-client privilege.

That last point matters more than most people realize.

Your Conversations Are Not Privileged

When you speak to your lawyer for the purpose of legal advice, in confidence, that communication is protected by solicitor-client privilege. The Supreme Court of Canada recently restated that privilege requires “a communication between lawyer and client,” “which entails the seeking or giving of legal advice,” and “which the parties intend to be confidential” (R. v. Fox, 2026 SCC 4). A chatbot is not a lawyer, so a conversation with one does not meet that test.

In the United States, a federal judge has already ruled that a criminal defendant’s conversations with an AI chatbot were not privileged and could be used, in a decision reported in February 2026. Prosecutors there have used defendants’ ChatGPT conversations as evidence in several cases. No Canadian court has ruled on the point yet, but there is no reason to expect a different answer.

Typing out your version of events, or your worries about what the police might find, creates a written record outside the protection of privilege. Our article on putting your disclosure into ChatGPT covers what happens to that information.

What This Means for You

• Use AI for general understanding, not for decisions about your case.
• Do not type the facts of your case, names, or anything from your disclosure into a chatbot.
• Check anything it tells you against an official source such as the Justice Laws website or the Ontario courts’ self-help guides.
• Get advice from a lawyer before you make any decision that matters: whether to plead, whether to accept a peace bond, whether to give a statement, whether to represent yourself.

How Mor Fisher Can Help

Our lawyers are in the Barrie and Central Ontario courts every week, and that local knowledge is exactly what an AI model does not have. A free first consultation will tell you how cases like yours are actually handled in your courthouse, and what realistic options look like. You can also read our guide on whether you need a criminal lawyer.

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AI can explain the law. It cannot negotiate with the Crown or stand up in court for you. Contact Mor Fisher LLP at 705-721-6642 or through our contact page for a confidential, privileged conversation about your case.