AI makes justice more transparent – researchers

Researchers from the University of Surrey sought to tailor AI to the language of British courtrooms

An artificial intelligence (AI) tool built at the University of Surrey which transcribes Supreme Court hearings makes "justice more transparent", researchers have claimed.

A new study has detailed how academics created a custom speech recognition system trained on 139 hours of hearings and legal documents.

The university said the system reduced transcription errors by up to 9% compared with leading commercial tools.

Prof Constantin Orăsan, study co-author and professor of language and translation technologies, said the current approach was outdated.

"Our courts deal with some of the most important questions in society. Yet the way we record and access those hearings is stuck in the past," he said.

"By tailoring AI to the unique language of British courtrooms, we've built a tool that makes justice more transparent and accessible."

The second part of the project used AI to semantically match paragraphs of judgements with the precise timestamp in the video where the argument was made.

According to the university, the tool is already attracting interest from the UK Supreme Court and the National Archives.

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