The Kerala High Court has issued a policy outlining the guidelines principles for the responsible use of artificial intelligence (AI) tools in district judging the state.
Recognizing that while AI tools are beneficial in many ways, there are also some negative consequences for the use of AI, including privacy violations, data security risks, and erosion of trust in judicial decisions, the Kerala High Court has advised district judiciary to exercise judicial justice with tools like judiciary.
It has been revealed that the guidelines can be applied to judicial officers, employees, interns, and legal personnel working with district judiciary.
The guidelines gave clear definitions to the terms AI, generator AI, AI tools, and approved AI tools.
Approved AI tools are defined as ” in the guidelines.AI application or AI application, software or a system that has been officially evaluated and approved by the Supreme Court of India for use in Kerala High Court or district judiciary.“
There are ten guideline principles, but these are simply:
1. The judiciary and employees must ensure that AI tools must adhere to the outlined integration principles.
2. Uploading non-authorized generation AI tools for prohibiting the filing of information including litigation facts, personal identifiers, privileged communications, or other documents related to the litigation. Therefore, you should avoid using all cloud-based services except for approved AI tools.
3. Results generated by approved AI tools such as legal citations and references must be verified by the judicial officer.
4. Translations generated by AI tools are verified by a judge or qualified translator.
5. Human supervision is always exercised through approved AI tools.
6. AI tools are not used to reach findings, relief, orders, or judgments.
7. Approved AI tools are used only for the purposes for which they are provided.
8. The court must maintain a detailed audit of all instances of AI use, including the names of the tools used and the human verification process adopted.
9. Judicial members and employees must attend the Judicial Academy or High Court training programme for the ethical, legal, practical and technical use of AI.
10. Any errors or issues that arise in the production of approved AI tools will be reported immediately to the District Court in principle, and the same must be promptly forwarded to the IT department of the High Court.
