New Delhi, February 17 As India hosts the world's largest artificial intelligence conclave, the AI Impact Summit-2026, to promote this new technology, the Supreme Court on Tuesday raised concerns about its potential drawbacks.
A bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant expressed serious concern over the increasing trend of lawyers filing petitions drafted using AI tools, which contain non-existent judgments such as 'Mercy vs Mankind'.
"We are alarmed to see that some lawyers are using AI to draft petitions. This is completely unnecessary," the bench, also comprising Justices B V Nagarathna and Joymalya Bagchi, said.
The court made these observations while hearing a public interest litigation (PIL) filed by academician Roop Rekha Verma seeking guidelines on political speeches.
Justice Nagarathna said she recently came across a non-existent citation, 'Mercy vs Mankind'.
The Chief Justice referred to a similar instance and said that in Justice Dipankar Datta's court, "not one, but a series of such judgments were cited".
Justice Nagarathna said that sometimes, the judgments cited are accurate, but fake quotes are attributed to those verdicts, making it very difficult to verify the contents.
"This creates an additional burden on the judges," Justice Nagarathna said.
Justice Bagchi, meanwhile, lamented the decline in the art of legal drafting and said that many special leave petitions mainly consist of lengthy quotations from prior judgments, with little original articulation of legal grounds.
The five-day artificial intelligence summit opened to packed halls and long queues on Monday, as tech moguls, industry leaders, policymakers, founders, and technologists thronged the Bharat Mandapam, where India is set to push for wider access to AI and seek international agreement on global AI commons.
With huge billboards around the city welcoming the delegates, speakers, and guests, Bharat Mandapam saw long queues much before the conference opened at 9.30 am on Monday, signalling people's interest in the subject and the summit.