Artificial intelligence will soon support lawyers across Europe. Aleksander Smywinski-Pohl, PhD, of WI AGH, is working on one of the key modules of the AI legal assistant
Generative AI tools, such as the popular ChatGPT, owe their immense popularity to their ability to process vast amounts of information and provide quick responses. Unfortunately, due to their limitations, they cannot be trusted with complex and important legal advice. So what can people who cannot afford professional advice do?
Researchers from the University of Luxembourg and AGH Krakow are working on a solution to this problem. The project is led by Tomer Libal of the University of Luxembourg, and the research leader in the Polish part of the project is Aleksander Smywinski-Pohl, PhD.
Trustworthy AI assistant
The goal of the international project is to create an innovative legal assistant supported by artificial intelligence. The topic the researchers are currently focusing on is patent law. The AI assistant they are creating is based on the law and existing rulings of the European Patent Office in the advice it gives. All of this is done to help interpret legal concepts that can be difficult to understand for people without legal knowledge.
One of the most important challenges in the context of the use of artificial intelligence in law is so-called AI hallucinations.
This phenomenon, which involves AI models generating fictionalized but seemingly reliable information, can have serious consequences when it comes to legal advice. Fictitious precedents or misinterpretations of laws can lead to erroneous decisions, financial losses and even unjust judgments. Therefore, it is crucial that systems under development, such as those being worked on by researchers from the University of Luxembourg and AGH, focus on precision and accountability, minimizing the risk of serious errors. The assistant, through a short questionnaire, conducted in a conversational format, provides reliable information on selected legal issues, in line with European rules and regulations.
The assistant, created together with the University of Luxembourg, is not the first project of Aleksander Smywinski-Pohl, PhD, which combines law and the latest technologies. He previously co-created, among others, the Polish Lemkin system (https://lemkin.pl/), which assists lawyers in analyzing regulations and automating legal processes.
About the project
The project is being implemented under the POLLUX program, co-financed by the National Center for Research and Development (NCBR) in Poland and the National Fund for Research (FNR) in Luxembourg. Consortium partners are the University of Luxembourg and AGH Krakow. The project runs from May 2023 to June 2025.