The framework also requires disclosure of AI use in legal filings, mandates human supervision of AI-assisted processes, and proposes regular audits, training programmes and governance mechanisms to oversee judicial AI deployment.How does India’s framework compare to those of other countries? Three broad models have emerged globally—the governance model, the guidance model and the smart-courts model. Each treats AI slightly differently.ThePrint unpacks the three models and how they differ from each other.
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The EU model
The EU has taken a strong stance on AI regulation ever since the proliferation of generative models began. Unusually, its rules on AI court usage are not separate regulations, but folded directly into the 2024 AI Act, which gives them the force of law across EU member states.In the EU framework, the use of AI in justice is considered a “high-risk” application, putting it in the same category as AI components in transport infrastructure and healthcare.These systems are then subject to “strict obligations”. In practice, this means judicial AI systems must meet requirements on risk management, human oversight, transparency, record-keeping and auditability before they can be deployed.As part of these requirements, all these systems must be overseen by humans who have been trained and are aware of potential AI-related issues. They must, in particular, “remain aware of the possible tendency of automatically relying or over-relying on the output produced by a high-risk AI system (‘automation bias’)”.Those assigned oversight have full authority to disregard and override any AI outputs.“The use of AI tools can support the decision-making power of judges or judicial independence, but should not replace it: the final decision-making must remain a human-driven activity,” the EU AI Act declares in its preamble.Even for allowable uses, the AI Act demands strict accountability measures. AI usage must be automatically logged and subject to scrutiny to ensure “a level of traceability of the functioning of a high-risk AI system”, according to the regulations.Further restrictions come from the EU’s strict data protection regime, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which imposes additional requirements for the lawful processing of personal data, transparency, purpose limitation and data minimisation.Since court records often contain highly sensitive personal information, judicial AI deployments frequently have to satisfy both the AI Act and GDPR.The result is a regulatory framework that neither prohibits nor fully embraces AI-driven justice. Instead, the EU seeks to ensure that AI remains a tool used by judges rather than a substitute for them, with extensive safeguards intended to preserve accountability, transparency and public trust in the judicial process.America’s guidance model
