Supreme Court releases draft rules allowing AI in courts but bars it from judicial decisions

SC's draft rules allows AI in courts, bar it in decision-making

The Supreme Court has proposed new rules for artificial intelligence in courts. These rules allow AI for tasks like legal research and drafting. However, AI will not be used to decide court cases. Judges will remain the sole decision-makers. Lawyers must disclose AI use in their filings. This framework aims to enhance efficiency while upholding judicial authority and due process. New Delhi: The Supreme Court has come out with draft regulations for the use of artificial intelligence in courts, permitting use of AI tools for legal research, drafting, translation, transcription and case management, but barring their use to determine judicial outcomes. The draft Regulations for Use of Artificial Intelligence in Courts, 2026 make it clear that judges alone will determine questions of law, facts and justice, and prohibit the use of AI for dispute-outcome prediction. While the draft allows lawyers to use AI tools to prepare pleadings and evidence it also proposes that they must tell the court when they do so. According to the proposed framework, deployment of AI systems that are opaque or incapable of explanation will be restricted in high-risk applications affecting the personal liberty or lawful rights of a person. The framework underlines that the technology can only be used in an assistive capacity and shall not compromise the independent exercise of judicial authority by a judge. The use of AI in court processes shall at all times remain strictly subservient to human judgment and judicial authority, it said. The draft comes amid concerns expressed by the top court in recent months over the growing reliance on AI by courts in rendering judgments. Experts said recent instances of AI-generated inaccuracies in legal filings should not come in the way of responsible technology adoption. "AI is a powerful tool that can enhance efficiency, reduce repetitive work, and support better legal outcomes, but accountability for the accuracy and integrity of any submission must always remain with the professional signing and submitting it," said Saakar Yadav, founder of Lexlegis AI, an AI platform for legal practitioners. "Just as a lawyer cannot disclaim responsibility for errors made by a junior associate or legal assistant, reliance on AI cannot be used as a defence for inadequate review or verification." He said legal professionals should view AI as an enabler and "not as a substitute for judgment, diligence, or accountability." "When deployed responsibly, technology can help justice accelerate without compromising the trust, reliability and due process that underpin the legal system. The objective is not merely efficiency, but enabling a justice delivery system that practitioners, judges and citizens can confidently rely upon," Yadav said. The draft framework, prepared by a Supreme Court committee chaired by Justice P S Narasimha, has been released for public consultation. Stakeholders can submit comments and suggestions until June 20.

How the Supreme Court's Draft AI Rules Would Govern Indian Courts

The Supreme Court draft regulations on AI use can be accessed here. The Supreme Court of India has published draft regulations on the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in courts, dated June 3, and has invited public comments by June 20. The regulations apply to every court in India, from the Supreme Court down to tribunals and statutory commissions. The core principle: AI can assist courts, but it cannot replace judicial decision-making. Every AI output serves only an advisory role, and final authority over law, facts, and justice rests exclusively with the judge. What AI can do in courts: * Case management: Scheduling, cause-list preparation, docket prioritisation, and defect identification in new filings. * Transcription: Of court proceedings, where a human must review and certify the output. * Translation: Translating judgments, orders, and pleadings, subject to human verification. * Legal research: Retrieving precedents, verifying citations, and summarising documents. * Administrative tasks: Assisting with case filing, record management, and the auto-generation of notices and summonses. * Litigant assistance: Powering chatbots that help litigants understand court procedures, under human oversight. * Accessibility: Supporting text-to-speech, speech-to-text, Braille translation, and visual-assistance tools. * Anonymisation: Anonymising judgments and records for publication in the public domain. * Fraud detection: Detecting fraud in administrative processes, subject to human review. What AI absolutely cannot do: These prohibitions are absolute and non-derogable. No AI system can: * Reach a judicial outcome through algorithmic decision-making (ADM) alone, meaning a process in which an algorithm, rather than a human, makes the determination. * Perform risk scoring, including predicting reoffending probability, bail eligibility, or flight risk. * Operate as a black box, meaning a system whose decision-making logic cannot be explained, in any process affecting personal liberty or legal rights. * Conduct surveillance of judges, lawyers, or litigants in connection with court premises. * Profile or predict the future behaviour of any party, witness, or legal representative. * Enter the record as independent evidence unless the submitting party fully discloses its AI-generated nature. * Use personal data for training unless approved by the appropriate authority. * Compromise the confidentiality of judicial deliberations. The disclosure requirement: Lawyers who use AI to prepare any pleading, document, or evidence must declare it at the time of submission. Courts that use AI in case management must inform the parties. Anyone using synthetic data, AI-generated audio, visual, or text content that mimics real data, must also disclose its use. The institutional structure: * Apex Body at the Supreme Court: A permanent, full-time body that governs AI across the judiciary. It will comprise two Supreme Court judges, two Chief Justices of High Courts, two High Court judges, a Joint Secretary from the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), and experts in cybersecurity, finance, and technology law. It will set minimum mandatory standards for all courts. * AI Committees at every High Court: These committees will comprise judges responsible for approving AI systems, monitoring compliance, and overseeing the AI Secretariat. They must meet at least once every three months. * AI Secretariat at each High Court: Headed by an officer of district judge rank, the Secretariat will maintain the AI Register and incident database, conduct audits, and handle approvals. * Centre of Research and Excellence on AI (CoRE-AI): This body will conduct research, evaluate AI tools, track international jurisprudence, and publish white papers. * AI Content Verification Authority: This authority will oversee the verification of Generative AI (GenAI)-generated content. Before deployment: Every AI system must clear a Technical and Ethical Impact Assessment covering its architecture, training data quality, risks of bias and hallucination, cybersecurity vulnerabilities, explainability, and incident reporting mechanisms. The appropriate authority must prescribe a standard assessment format within six months of the regulations coming into force. Ongoing oversight: * Every court must maintain an AI Register documenting approved systems, their scope, vendors, and audit outcomes. * Every AI system must undergo technical, legal, and ethical audits at least once a year. * Each AI Secretariat must maintain an AI Incident Database tracking malfunctions and biases, and share learnings across jurisdictions. * Every High Court must publish an Annual Transparency Report. On private vendors: No private entity can participate without prior written approval. Vendor agreements must: * Prohibit vendors from using sensitive judicial data beyond the scope of the engagement. * Prohibit vendors from retraining or fine-tuning models on court data without written approval from the AI Committee. * Require on-premises or sovereign-cloud deployment for sensitive judicial data. * Vest ownership of any tool built on judicial data in the court and prohibit vendors from claiming intellectual property rights over tools developed primarily using judicial or public resources. * Prevent vendors from sharing source code and training data with third parties, except for authorised audits. On data protection: Sensitive judicial data cannot leave court systems without written authorisation. Courts must anonymise personal data before using it for training, to the extent feasible without compromising utility, and should prefer systems that require less data processing. Grievance redressal: Any party harmed by a prohibited use of AI may apply to the court where the system was used. That court must hear the matter and pass appropriate orders. The retraining question: AI training data versus the right to be forgotten On May 29, 2026, the Delhi High Court delivered a 144-page judgment directing Google and Indian Kanoon to de-index name-based search results for petitioners in cases ending in acquittal, settlement, or discharge. The judgments remain accessible through case numbers and citations, but the platforms must remove the individuals' names from search results. The draft regulations require courts to anonymise personal data before training AI systems going forward. However, they do not address systems that have already been trained on judicial data that is later ordered to be de-indexed. Key questions remain: * What happens to a system that already trained on a judgment before a court orders it de-indexed or a name anonymised? * Does the draft provide a mechanism for a party who has obtained a de-indexing order to remove their data from an existing model's training set? * If a court's legal research tool surfaces a name that a court has ordered removed, what steps must the court take? De-indexing orders against Google and Indian Kanoon do not affect the training data of models already in operation within courts. The Delhi High Court judgment already covers more than 30 petitions filed since 2016, while the Supreme Court is separately examining the broader scope of the right to be forgotten.