Artificial Intelligence cannot substitute Human Intelligence in Court: HC

The Delhi High Court has ruled that artificial intelligence (AI) cannot replace human intellect or the humane aspect in the adjudicatory process, and that ChatGPT cannot be used to adjudicate legal or factual problems in a court of law. According to Justice Prathiba M Singh, the quality and trustworthiness of AI produced data are still in the grey area, and such a tool may only be used for basic comprehension or preliminary study.

The observations were made by the court while dealing with a case filed by luxury brand Christian Louboutin against a partnership entity involved in the production and sale of shoes that allegedly violated its trademark.

The plaintiff’s attorney said that “Red Sole Shoe” was its registered trademark in India and challenged ChatGPT’s “reputation” in court.

“The aforementioned tool (ChatGPT) cannot be used to adjudicate legal or factual issues in a court of law. The answer of a Large Language Model (LLM)-based chatbot, such as ChatGPT, which is requested to be relied on by the Plaintiff’s Counsel, is dependent on a variety of elements, including the form and structure of the user’s inquiry, the training data, and so on. Furthermore, AI chatbots may create inaccurate replies, fake case rules, inventive facts, and so on,” the court stated in a recent judgement.

“The accuracy and reliability of AI-generated data remains a grey area. The Court is convinced that, at this point in technical progress, AI cannot replace either human intellect or the humane element in the adjudicatory process. At best, the tool could be used for preliminary understanding or preliminary research and nothing more,” the court concluded.

The court finally decided that the defendant had a “clear intention to imitate and gain monetarily on the strength of the plaintiff’s reputation and goodwill” based on a comparative review of the two parties’ products.

“There is no doubt in this Court’s mind that the Defendant’s products are knock-offs or look-alikes of the Plaintiff’s distinctive shoes and footwear. The Defendant has duplicated all of the fundamental aspects of the Plaintiff’s footwear, including the ‘Red Sole’ and ‘Spiked Shoe Style’, as well as the prints. The imitation is not of one or two designs, but of a large number of designs, as indicated by the chart above,” the court stated.

The defendant consented to guarantee that it would not reproduce or imitate any of the patterns of the plaintiff’s shoes, and the court ordered that if this undertaking was breached, the defendant would be obliged to pay the plaintiff Rs.25 lakh in damages.

Given that the defendant was also utilising images of well-known Bollywood celebrities on its Instagram account and displayed/sold the shoes at high-end stores, it was ordered that the defendant pay the plaintiff Rs.2 lakh in expenses.