The role of artificial intelligence is only an assistant, not a judge, says India’s chief justice

Chief Justice of India Justice Surya Kant. File | Photo credit: Allen Egenuse J

Chief Justice of India Surya Kant on Saturday (July 11, 2026) clarified that artificial intelligence (AI) should only be used for procedural convenience and not in actual adjudication. AI’s role is only an assistant, not a judge.

The CJI’s caution comes amid recent judgments and observations from the apex court on the dangers of blindly relying on AI.

Earlier this month, a Bench headed by Justice PS Narasimha found that the Tribunal had relied on AI-hallucinated verdicts to decide a genuine case. The Supreme Court advocated “zero tolerance” for blind reliance on machine intelligence, while stressing that such carelessness would spell disaster for the judicial process itself.

In recent months, Supreme Court judges, including Justices BV Nagarathna and Dipankar Datta, have noted in public hearings that they have encountered AI-generated hallucinations and citations of non-existent case law in legal petitions, including a fictitious case titled “Mercy versus Humanity”.

Careful hugs

Chief Justice Kant said the real question to be asked is not whether India should adopt these instruments or not. The CJI said the relevant point of discussion should be the need for legislative clarity and human oversight.

“The exercise of inclusion is already underway and cannot reasonably be resisted. The question is whether we build legislative clarity and human oversight to ensure that these platforms expand access to justice, not narrow it, precisely for the people who are least equipped to challenge the algorithm’s output,” Chief Justice Kant said in his address at a summit organized by the Indian Institute of Arbitration and Mediation.

The CJI drew the line on the use of AI in the administration of justice, saying that AI can resolve a dispute, organize evidence or suggest a first translation. “But the moment it starts weighing one party’s stock against the other’s, it has stopped assisting and started deciding, and no algorithm has yet acquired the ability or authority to do that silently,” the CJI said.

The chief justice said the honest answer to whether digital dispute resolution and artificial intelligence will improve or disrupt access to justice is that “they will do both, depending on how we deliberately design their use”.

The president of the court emphasized that artificial intelligence tools should not decide disputes. Recent technological interventions at the Supreme Court are limited to helping judges with legal research and summarizing cases or translating judgments into regional languages.

They remain “deliberately helpful rather than judicial”, the CJI emphasized.

Published – 11 Jul 2026 20:22 IST