California court system to decide on AI rule
State courts in California would be required to adopt policies on the use of artificial intelligence unless they ban AI outright, under a proposed new judicial rule.
The Judicial Council of California — the policy making body for the state’s court system — on Friday will consider the AI proposal. If adopted, California would become the largest state court system with an AI rule or policy.
California's court system, which includes 65 individual courts and about 1,800 judges, would follow Illinois, Delaware, Arizona and others in adopting an AI policy. California has the nation’s largest state court system with five million cases.
New York, Georgia, and Connecticut are among the states currently looking at generative AI within their courts.
The California proposal, developed by an artificial intelligence task force established by Chief Justice Patricia Guerrero in 2024, calls for all California courts that allow generative AI in court-related work to either adopt the model AI policy released by the task force in February or modify the model policy to address their specific goals by September.
Those policies must address the “confidentiality, privacy, bias, safety, and security risks posed by generative AI systems," according to the task force’s report on the proposal. The policies must also address the “supervision, accountability, transparency, and compliance when using those systems.”
For example, the court policies must prohibit entering confidential information into public generative AI systems, prohibit unlawful discrimination through AI programs, and require court staff and judicial officers to “take reasonable steps to verify the accuracy of the material.”
Staff and judicial officers would also have to disclose their use of AI if the final version of any written, visual, or audio work provided to the public was generated entirely by AI.
A 2024 report from the National Center for State Courts suggested that courts harness generative AI for basic tasks such as drafting internal communications, performance reviews, and summaries of published Supreme Court opinions before using it for more complex tasks like data extraction and entry and external chatbots for people using courts’ self-help programs.
Nationwide, state courts have been slow to embrace generative AI, according to a recent survey of 443 state, county and municipal courts by the Thomson Reuters Institute, which shares a parent company with Reuters. That survey found that just 17% of state courts are using generative AI, and only 34% allow generative AI for court business.
Read more:
Illinois top court say judges and lawyers can use AI, with limits
Delaware top court sets rules on AI use for judges, staff
