Can ChatGPT be Your ERISA Counsel?

Is ChatGPT sufficiently reliable to provide advice on employee benefits matters? Not yet, but ChatGPT and generative Artificial Intelligence may likely be useful tools for employee benefits attorneys in the future.

As it is late March, we asked ChatGPT 3.5 to solve a common issue: an individual made deferrals above the Internal Revenue Code § 402(g) limit (although typically these are referred to as “excess deferrals,” in the ChatGPT 3.5 reply it uses both “excess contribution” or “excess deferral” interchangeably. In the Faegre comments, we use the term “excess deferral.”). As background, the Internal Revenue Code limits the amount of employee deferrals that can be made within a participant’s taxable year (almost always the calendar year). In 2023, that limit was $22,500. An individual who participates in more than one 401(k)/403(b) plan is responsible for monitoring whether they exceed the limit with respect to all plans in which the individual participates.