'AI Tools Not Be Used To Arrive At Judgments': Kerala High Court Issues Guidelines For AI Use In District Judiciary

Kerala High Court has issued a policy outlining guiding principles for the responsible use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools in district judiciary in the State.

Recognising that while AI tools can be beneficial in many ways, there are also several negative consequences in AI use including privacy violations, data security risks and erosion of trust in judicial decisions, the Kerala High Court advised the district judiciary to exercise caution while judicial such tools.

It was made clear that the guidelines would be applicable to the judicial officers, employees, interns as well as law clerks working with the district judiciary.

The guidelines gave clear definitions to the words AI, Generative AI, AI tools, and approved AI tools.

Approved AI tools is defined in the guidelines as "any AI application or set of AI applications, software, or systems that have undergone formal evaluation and received approval from the High Court of Kerala or the Supreme Court of India for use at the District Judiciary."

There are ten guiding principles, which in brief is:

1. The judiciary and employees are to ensure that the AI tools must adhere to the integral principles outlined.

2. Prohibition on submission of information including facts of the case, personal identifiers, or privileged communications or uploading any other documents relating to the litigations to non-approved generative AI tools. Hence, the use of all cloud-based services should be avoided except for the approved AI tools.

3. Any results generated by approved AI tools, such as legal citation or references or others have to be verified by the judicial officers.

4. Translations generated by AI tools are to verified by judges or qualified translators.

5. Human supervision is to exercised over approved AI tools at all times.

6. AI tools are not to be used to arrive at findings, reliefs, orders or judgments.

7. The approved AI tools are to used solely for the purposes for which they have been provided.

8. Courts have to maintain a detailed audit of all instances of AI use, including the names of tools used and the human verification process adopted.

9. The members of the judiciary and the employees must attend training programmes of the Judicial Academy or the High Court regarding ethical, legal, practical and technical use of AI.

10. The errors or issues noticed in outputs of approved AI tools are to be reported immediately to the Principle District Court and the same has to forwarded to the IT department of the High Court promptly.