Supreme Court Testing AI-Driven Live Transcription Of Hearings

AI transcription was used during the hearing of a case on the Maharashtra political crisis by a Constitution Bench of the apex court.

“Truly a court of record, because every word is recorded,” said Justice P S Narasimha.

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The Supreme Court on Tuesday began testing a system of live transcription of its hearings for the first time using artificial intelligence (AI) and technology powered by natural language processing (NLP). Chief Justice DY Chandrachud said that the live transcribing service is being used as an experiment. The technology was used during the hearing of the case on the Maharashtra political crisis by a Constitution Bench of the apex court headed by CJI DY Chandrachud on Tuesday. 

At the beginning of the proceeding, Chief Justice Chandrachud said, “Members of the bar you can see a screen here. This is live transcript facility and this is an experiment.”

“We had to do it in a live environment. So it’s an experiment. We will just see how it works at least in the Constitution Bench matters. Then, we will have a permanent record of arguments which will of course help lawyers and judges, but also our law colleges. They can analyse how matters are argued…,” CJI said.

“Truly a court of record, because every word is recorded,” said Justice P S Narasimha.

Chief Justice Chandrachud said, “The only thing is that if there are two or more voices at the same time, that causes a little bit of a problem. But they obviously have personnel who will clean up the errors by the evening. They suggested that during the course of the day, the counsel will get the link, so the counsel can look at it. By evening, they would have cleaned up the transcript and given it to us”.

Justice Narasimha also pointed out, “In virtual court proceedings, anyone who wants to interrupt would lift their finger so that there is no cross-talk.”