Flip side of AI translation? Supreme Court Judge says "leave granted" became "chutti sweekaar"

The Supreme Court on Monday commented on the flip side of placing too much reliance on Artificial Intelligence (AI), particularly when it comes to translations of legal documents..A Bench of Justices BR Gavai and KV Viswanathan was prompted to discuss the topic after pronouncing a judgment that required reference to the English translations of Hindi court records.Several translations of legal documents were incorrect, the Court observed.Addressing Senior Counsel Sidharth Luthra and Mukul Rohatgi who were present in court at the time, Justice Viswanathan said that lawyers need to take care to mention the correct words in their pleadings. Leaving this task to AI may result in amusing errors, the Court added. "Once I was using AI to translate a judgment and 'leave granted' became chutti sweekaar (holiday approved)," Justice Viswanathan recalled. "In other times, it is translated as avkaash sweekrit (vacation approval)," Justice Gavai quipped..AI has become a driving force in the Supreme Court of India's recent efforts to use technology to widen access to justice. In January 2023, Chief Justice of India (CJI) DY Chandrachud remarked in a speech that the next step for the Indian judiciary in an increasingly digitised world would be to make judgments from various courts available in all Indian languages, possibly with the help of AI.In February 2023, the Court began using AI and technology driven by Natural Language Processing for the live transcription of its hearings in Constitution Bench cases.In May 2023, CJI Chandrachud added that the Supreme Court is working on making such transcripts of court proceedings available in regional languages.Notably, this year's Supreme Court Hackathon (a competition meant to attract innovative ideas to improve processes in the court registry) is also centered on the use of AI based solutions to improve the functions of the top court's registry..CJI DY Chandrachud constitutes Committee headed by Justice AS Oka for translating Supreme Court judgments into regional languages