Why a Court Ruling About AI Prompts Made Me Say "Bullshit" Out Loud

I was reading an article the other day about a recent federal court ruling — a judge decided that lawyers must now preserve all of their AI prompts and inquiries in case they become relevant to future litigation.

The author's take? It's the court's way of cracking down on attorneys who file AI-generated documents without checking them. You know, the hallucinated citations, the made-up case law, the "I trusted ChatGPT and now I'm sanctioned" situations.

And I'm reading this, nodding along, and then I stopped.

Wait. That doesn't make sense.

If they wanted to catch bad work, they'd ask for the work.

But they're not asking for the output — the actual filings. They're asking for the input. The prompts. The questions attorneys are typing into AI systems.

And that's when I said it out loud: Bullshit.

This isn't about catching lazy lawyers. This is about data.

Let me break down what I think is really happening.

We are in the middle of what I can only describe as a data gold rush. Information is currency. The companies that control data — how it flows, who has access to it, what can be extracted from it — are the most powerful entities in the world right now.

So when a lawyer types their client's confidential situation into ChatGPT to get a "better" answer, what are they actually doing?

They're feeding sensitive, privileged information into a public system. Information that, under normal circumstances, would be protected. Information that wouldn't be discoverable in litigation. Information that the client trusted would stay between them and their attorney.

And now it's... somewhere. In a dataset. Being used to train models. Potentially accessible in ways no one fully understands yet.

This ruling isn't about ethics. It's about data governance.

The courts are establishing that prompts — the questions you ask AI — are discoverable. They're relevant. They matter.

And once that precedent is set? It applies everywhere.

Think about what that means for your business. For your team. For the way you've been casually using AI tools without thinking twice about what you're feeding into them.

We're in the dial-up era of AI.

I say this all the time, but I really need people to hear it: we are at the very beginning of this technology. Like, pre-Google beginning. Dial-up internet beginning. "What is a website and why would I need one" beginning.

The infrastructure for how we regulate, protect, and govern AI use is being built right now. In real-time. By rulings like this one.

And if you're a founder, a business owner, someone who's building something — you need to be paying attention.

Not because AI is scary. I actually think it's incredibly exciting. The possibilities for what we can create, automate, and innovate are genuinely thrilling to me.

But excitement doesn't mean ignorance.

Here's what I want you to take away from this.

Prompt engineering isn't just about getting better answers from ChatGPT. It's becoming a professional competency — one with real legal and ethical implications.

The information you feed into AI systems matters. It can be traced. It can be preserved. It can be used.

And the people who understand this now — who are building their AI practices with intention and awareness — are the ones who will lead their industries through whatever comes next.

A note on the bigger picture.

I can't talk about AI without talking about the broader shift I see happening: tokenization, blockchain, the digitization of everything. These aren't separate trends — they're interconnected.

The way we interact with data, value, and ownership is fundamentally changing. And AI is both accelerating that change and being shaped by it.

I know some people find this overwhelming. Or scary. Or just... too much to think about right now.

But here's my philosophy: adapt, don't shrink.

If you're going to be here — in business, in this world, building something that matters to you — why not be here and thrive? Even when things are uncertain. Even when the ground is shifting under your feet.

You don't have to agree with every development. You don't have to love every change. But you can choose to engage with it. To understand it. To position yourself to shape it rather than just react to it.

So yeah. Preserve your prompts.

But more than that — start thinking about what you're feeding into these systems and why.

Start asking questions about data governance, even if you're not a lawyer.

Start building practices that let you move fast without exposing yourself or your business unnecessarily.

Because the world is moving. And the people who see where it's going? They're the ones who get to help decide what it looks like when it gets there.

QK Douglas is an attorney, speaker, and business compliance consultant. Through QKI Consulting, she helps founders and businesses navigate the intersection of law, strategy, and emerging technology. She's based in Oklahoma and serves clients in Oklahoma City, Tulsa, and Dallas.