AI in the courtroom is no longer a distant possibility—it’s here. At a recent conference at the Kenyan Supreme Court, Justice B.R. Gavai cautioned that AI-driven legal research isn’t foolproof, with tools like ChatGPT fabricating case citations. As AI's presence in legal institutions grows, its impact and associated risks have both become impossible to ignore.
This concern is particularly relevant given the rising global debate on the role of AI in the judiciary. Closer to home, the Bangalore bench of the Income Tax Appellate Tribunal recently issued a tax order that cited completely fictitious judgments. It used AI not merely as an assistive tool but as the sole basis for its legal reasoning. Conversely, the high courts of Manipur and Punjab & Haryana have used AI strictly for research purposes, ensuring that human judges retain full control over decision-making, a point also supported by Justice Gavai. This difference highlights an ongoing dilemma—on one hand, AI has the potential to make judicial processes more efficient and less burdensome; on the other, it comes with significant risks, including hallucination (the generation of incorrect or misleading outputs) and IP violations. This underscores a broader question: How should the Indian legal system approach AI?
Beyond the courtroom, AI is also reshaping intellectual property law. From disputes over the ownership and attribution of AI-generated works to questions about rights over training data, AI is reshaping some of IP’s major foundational assumptions. The ongoing litigation between ANI and OpenAI has further exposed gaps in existing legal frameworks, highlighting the tension between human creativity and machine-generated content. Traditional copyright and patent laws—centred on originality, authorship, and inventorship—are being tested as AI systems autonomously generate text, music, and art. Yet, these technologies rely on human-created datasets, raising complex concerns about fair use, attribution, compensation, and moral rights of the artists.
Recognising the urgency of these issues, NLSIR Online is launching a special series examining the intersection of AI, intellectual property rights, and the Indian judicial system. This series aims to foster a nuanced dialogue on how India’s legal system can navigate this technological shift while upholding its core values of human creativity, judicial discretion, and access to justice.
NLSIR Editorial Board 2024-25*
*The Editorial Board thanks Priyam Mitra and Ritesh Raj for ideating the theme, and conceptualizing the series
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