A bench of Chief Justice of India Surya Kant and Justices BV Nagarathna and Joymalya Bagchi said an “alarming” trend has led to non-existent or fictitious case law being cited in petitions. File | Photo credit: Shashi Shekhar Kashyap
The Supreme Court on Tuesday (February 17, 2026) expressed serious concern over the growing reliance on artificial intelligence (AI) in drafting legal petitions.
A bench of Chief Justice of India Surya Kant and Justices BV Nagarathna and Joymalya Bagchi said an “alarming” trend has led to non-existent or fictitious case law being cited in petitions.
In December 2025, the Chief Justice stated that the court was very aware of the risks of the indiscriminate use of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) in legal work. The court also made it clear that the judiciary did not want artificial intelligence to overpower the process of administration of justice.
At the time, the court was hearing a petition filed by Kartikeya Rawal, which highlighted the dangers of GenAI that could create “hallucinations” that would result in fictitious judgments, research materials, and worse, even work to maintain bias.
On Tuesday (February 17, 2026), the Bench said that the use of artificial intelligence for legal propositions was “totally undesirable”. Justice Nagarathna recalled how a lawyer arguing before her had recently cited a non-existent case law entitled “Mercy vs Humanity”.
The judge said some of the petitions are quoting from non-existent parts of the actual judgments. The Bench pointed out that easy means of conducting legal research should not come at the cost of accuracy and truth.
The Bench referred to how a case before another apex court A Bench headed by Justice Dipankar Datta cited judicial precedents that did not exist.
Published – 17 Feb 2026 22:26 IST