AI transcription in courts needs to better ‘protect victims’
Systems that can automate the process of writing up cases are already being tested in the justice system, but the results must better account for the traumatic content being covered
Companies providing artificial intelligence tools that can be used to transcribe court proceedings need to ensure that the technology better “protects victims”, according to a top official at the Ministry of Justice.
During a recent evidence session of the Public Accounts Committee – as part of an enquiry into the costs of delivering government services – committee member Sarah Olney, a Liberal Democrat MP, said that she has “been waging a campaign across two parliaments now to scrap court transcript fees for victims of sexual assault”.
Olney revealed that a woman in her constituency of Richmond Park had been “charged £7,000 for the transcript of the rape trial that eventually led to her attacker going to prison”.
In a question posed to the Ministry of Justice’s interim director of financial strategy and partnerships Farhad Chikhalia, the Lib Dem MP asked for details of the justice system’s ongoing explorations of using automated transcription tools – which Olney suggested could deliver lower costs and service improvements.
Chikhalia acknowledged that the issue is “something ministers are very mindful of… and the costs are very high right now”. The senior official added that, while experiments with the technology to date have shown promise, some challenges remain – particularly regarding the most sensitive or traumatic details of cases.
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“We have a small innovation fund in the department and one of the things it is actually funding is using this AI transcription in HM Courts and Tribunals Service,” he said. “It is at a relatively early stage and one of the things that we have come across recently, which has been a bit of a blocker, is working with these kinds of companies that have this kind of technology, but doing it in a way that protects victims who may have been through really horrific crimes. They will have transcripts of information that people do not want to be shared or do not want to be held. There are barriers to using the technology, but it absolutely is one of the things we are looking at. We really recognise the benefit that it can have for victims, if we are able to roll that out more widely and get rid of these kind of costs.”
Chikhalia also told MPs that the MoJ is examining other potential use cases in the justice system of transcribing tools powered by artificial intelligence.
“One of the things that we are looking at, through the work on digitisation that we are considering, is whether you can use that AI automation technology when judges are doing the work of typing up their notes,” he said. “The thing, again, we are mindful of there is getting uptake of the use of that kind of technology, which can be a barrier. It is absolutely one of the things that we want to look at.”
Other potential government uses of similar tools include Home Office experiments with AI tech that could be used in UK immigration and border operations to automatically transcribe and translate languages other than English. The National Archives, meanwhile, has trialled the use of AI for reviewing and digitally transcribing historic documents.
