Artificial intelligence (AI) is to play an important role in the Indian legal system. It is lately announced that Supreme Court of India is to introduce AI Saransh into the legal system. Delhi High Court Acting Chief Justice (ACJ) made the announcement at the IBA International Conference in Mexico City 2024. The AI tool is said to streamline summarizing legal pleadings. AI Saransh has been developed by the National Informatics Centre (NIC) and is expected to transform the process of legal documentations.
AI Saransh has the ability to generate concise summaries of lengthy pleadings and pinpointing the most contentious issues with remarkable precision. The traditional methods of manually reviewing legal documents can be labor-intensive and expensive. AI Saransh promises to reduce the burden by automating the summarization process. It uses extractive as well as abstractive techniques to summarize the material. Extractive summarization pulls out key sections from the original text and abstractive summarization goes further by generating new phrases that accurately convey the essence of the document. The latter approach mimics the way humans naturally summarize information.
ACJ Manmohan acknowledged the role of AI in areas such as alternative dispute resolution (ADR) and courtroom processes. This means technology is to play a greater role in the Indian judiciary system in the future. AI-enabled tools like TERES (provide multilingual transcription and translation of judgments) and AI SUVAS (instrumental in vernacular language support) are already part of the system.
The legislative environment in India is also evolving to support the technological advancements. The remarks of ACJ Manmohan on the Mediation Act of 2023 and the continuous amendments to the Arbitration Act highlight the commitment of India to create a more arbitration-friendly legal environment.
