# [IGF 2026 WS #392 Judgment in the Age of Intelligence: Governing Judicial AI](https://intgovforum.org/en/content/igf-2026-ws-392-judgment-in-the-age-of-intelligence-governing-judicial-ai)

## Description

UNESCO's 2024 global survey of over 500 judicial operators across 96 countries found widespread, largely unguided use of generative AI, and a clear majority requesting regulation and training. Judges draft with chatbots, lawyers file AI-written submissions, litigants arrive with AI-generated evidence, and algorithms inform bail, sentencing, and parole decisions. The costs of the governance gap are on the record: courts in the United Kingdom, Kenya, and elsewhere have caught submissions built on fabricated case law, with fines, wasted costs, and warnings from the bench. In Malawi, judges report individual use of commercial chatbots for judicial tasks with no institutional framework. In Kenya, the Judiciary has counted seven hallucinated-citation incidents and is responding with a Judiciary AI Adoption Policy Framework.
The promise is as real as the risk. Courts across the Global South face crushing backlogs, and AI-assisted drafting, transcription, translation, and case management can shorten the distance between citizens and justice: Argentina's Prometea assistant nearly tripled case-processing productivity, and automated transcription is speeding Egyptian courts. UNESCO's Guidelines for the Use of AI Systems in Courts and Tribunals, the first global framework in this field, insist AI must remain assistive, never substitutive, under meaningful human oversight. The task now is translation: turning global principles into court rules, practice directions, procurement standards, training, and evidence doctrine that work in real judiciaries. This session convenes sitting judges from three African courts, the architects of the global guidance, court technologists, bar leaders, and scholars of AI evidence to do exactly that, and presents the judiciary findings of the Africa AI Governance Index covering all 54 African states.

## Policy Question(s)

**individual use to institutional policy:** judges are already using commercial chatbots on personal accounts, feeding case information into systems with no controls. What rules must a judiciary put in place, secure tools, procurement, and training, before informal use hardens into invisible practice
**global principles to local rules:** the UNESCO Guidelines set the floor, and Kenya, US state courts, and others are building national and court-level frameworks. What does faithful translation look like in judiciaries with thin budgets, low connectivity, multilingual courtrooms
AI-generated evidence, deepfakes, black-box forensic tools, and AI-drafted pleadings test doctrines of admissibility, disclosure, proprietary and professional responsibility

## Expected Outcomes

A public presentation of the judiciary findings of the Africa AI Governance Index and the Lawyers Hub report on judicial use of AI in Africa, giving the session a continental evidence base. An African bench-and-bar checklist for judicial AI governance, mapping the UNESCO Guidelines to court rules, practice directions, procurement standards, and training. A comparative matrix of judicial AI frameworks in progress, spanning the UNESCO Guidelines, Kenya's Judiciary AI Adoption Policy Framework, and US state court rules, for adaptation by other judiciaries. A training pathway connecting UNESCO's judicial curriculum to African judicial training institutes through the Africa AI Policy Lab. A record of judicial perspectives feeding into the IGF 2026 outputs and into national judiciary consultations in Kenya, Malawi, and Ghana.

## Format

Theater
**Duration (minutes):** 90
**Format description:** The session moves from a scene-setting UNESCO keynote and a ten-minute research presentation of new continental evidence through two panel rounds, the bench speaking first, to an open floor exchange that includes judicial officers attending IGF 2026. Ninety minutes is the minimum needed to hear three sitting judges, the evidence and policy specialists, and the bar, while protecting a full open exchange with in-person and online participants. A theater layout suits a moderated panel before a large audience at UNON. The moderator will run timed interventions, direct panelists to respond to one another rather than deliver serial statements, and alternate between the room and the virtual queue during the floor exchange.

## Hybrid Format

**Hybrid Format:** A dedicated online co-moderator will run the virtual room alongside the onsite moderator, merge the in-room and online question queues into a single order, and hold a guaranteed slot for online interventions in the floor exchange. Online panelists will take part in the same panel rounds as onsite panelists, on equal airtime, not in a separate segment.
How will you facilitate interaction between onsite and online speakers and attendees?
A dedicated online co-moderator will run the virtual room alongside the onsite moderator, merge the in-room and online question queues into a single order, and hold a guaranteed slot for online interventions in the floor exchange. Online panelists will take part in the same panel rounds as onsite panelists, on equal airtime, not in a separate segment.

## Organizers

**Organizer 1:** Linda Bonyo, Lawyers Hub Africa

## Speakers

**Speaker 1:** Linda Bonyo, Civil Society, African Group
**Speaker 2:** Prateek Sibal, Intergovernmental Organization, Intergovernmental Organization
**Speaker 3:** Ablorh Sylvester, Government, African Group

## Moderator

Linda Bonyo, Civil Society, African Group

## Online Moderator

Linda Bonyo, Civil Society, African Group

## Rapporteur

Linda Bonyo, Civil Society, African Group

## Participant Benefits

What will participants gain from attending this session?

## SDGs

1. No Poverty
16. Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions