Judge Victoria Kolakowski sat in her Alameda County courtroom in September 2025, watching a video the plaintiffs had submitted to defeat summary judgment. Something was off. The witness in the recording spoke in a flat monotone. Her facial expressions twitched in a seven-to-ten-second loop. The metadata claimed an iPhone 6 Plus running iOS 12.5.5, but the visual processing required Apple Intelligence, a feature that ships only on iPhone 15 Pro and later. The judge issued an order to show cause. At the hearing, plaintiff Maridol Mendones admitted some of the witnesses depicted were deceased, others uncontactable, and that generative AI had produced the footage. The court struck the operative complaint and dismissed with prejudice.
