Supreme Court Panel Proposes Complete Ban on Using AI to Decide Judicial Outcomes
New Delhi: The draft regulations proposed by the Supreme Court’s artificial intelligence (AI) committee include a complete ban on using AI to decide judicial outcomes, restrictions on AI tools which predict or profile parties and witnesses along with a prohibition on undisclosed or unexplainable AI systems in court processes, reported Indian Express.
The committee has said in a preliminary draft of the “Regulations for Use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Courts, 2026” which was published by the Supreme Court on Wednesday (June 3) that the use of AI in court processes will always “remain strictly subservient to human judgment and judicial authority”.
The preliminary draft says that AI systems will function solely in an assistive capacity and “shall not supplant or compromise the independent exercise of judicial authority by a duly appointed judicial officer” and “the ultimate authority to determine matters of law, fact and justice shall vest exclusively in the judicial officers of the competent jurisdiction”, reported Indian Express.
The committee is chaired by Justice P.S. Narasimha, and also includes Justices Sanjeev Sachdeva, Raja Vijayraghavan V, Anoop Chitkara, and Suraj Govindaraj as members. It has sought the views and suggestions of all stakeholders and the general public on the draft recommendations by June 20 before they are finalised. The suggestions have to be submitted by June 20.
“No AI System shall be deployed that perpetuates, amplifies, or introduces bias on the grounds of race, religion, caste, sex, gender, disability, language, economic status, or any other ground prohibited under the Constitution or any law for the time being in force and special care shall be taken to protect the rights and interests of vulnerable groups including women, children, persons with disabilities, marginalised and minority communities, and persons from economically and socially disadvantaged backgrounds,” says the draft.
The draft has also made some exceptions and according to it, the permissible uses of AI include for case management, cause list preparation, hearing scheduling, transcription of court proceedings, translation of judgments etc, legal research, administrative functions including case filing assistance, defect scrutiny, record management and judicial resource allocation, conversational AI assistants and guided chatbots to assist litigants and other stakeholders in accessing court services and understanding procedural requirements, accessibility services for persons with disabilities or language barriers and anonymisation of court records.
In February this year, a Supreme Court bench led by Chief Justice of India (CJI) Surya Kant had highlighted the issue of lawyers submitting petitions drafted with the help of artificial intelligence (AI) containing cases citations which are fake.
“We are alarmed to reflect now- some of the lawyers have started AI to draft. It is absolutely uncalled for,” CJI Kant had said.
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