The Supreme Court Tuesday started testing a system of live transcription of oral arguments advanced by lawyers for the first time using Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools and technology driven by Natural Language Processing.
The Chief Justice of India D Y Chandrachud, while heading a Constitution Bench, pointed to a screen placed facing lawyers in his courtroom. He said, “We are just trying to explore the possibility of live transcription of arguments in the court”.
“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…”, he 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 pointed out, “In virtual court proceedings, anyone who wants to interrupt would lift their finger so that there is no cross-talk”. He said this can be followed in the physical hearings too so that there is no overlap of arguments.
Source: Indian Express
