Quebec’s judicial system has established new boundaries for the use of generative artificial intelligence within its courtrooms. The guidelines, adopted by multiple levels of the provincial judiciary, permit the technology only for administrative or linguistic support while strictly prohibiting it from performing core legal reasoning.
The La Presse report that triggered the crackdown
The urgency for these rules was catalyzed by a specific failure in judicial accuracy that threatened the integrity of the legal process. As reported by La Presse in March, a judicial decision was found to contain references to case law that simply did not exist.. This incident, which highlighted the "hallucination" risks inherent in generative models, created a profound sense of urgency within the Quebec judiciary to establish clear boundaries before such errors became systemic.
From text translation to the ban on substantive reasoning
The new 10-page document, jointly adopted by the Quebec Court of Appeal, Superior Court, Court of Quebec, and municipal courts, draws a sharp line between administrative assistance and substantive authority. Under these rules, judges may utilize AI for "limited tasks" such as correcting, revising, or translating text they have already drafted. this ensures that while a judge might use a tool to rephrase a paragraph, the underlying legal meaning remains untouched by the machine's probabilistic logic.
However, the guidelines explicitly forbid using AI to analyze facts,assess the credibility of witnesses, or determine the ultimate outcome of a legal dispute . The courts emphasize that AI must never be used as a source of legal authority or as a tool for interpreting the relevance of disputed facts. Any AI-assisted work must remain under strict human control and undergo independent verification to protect the principles of judicial independence and fairness.
Why no error can be blamed on a machine
Accountability remains the cornerstone of the new provincial policy, ensuring that technology does not dilute the weight of a legal ruling. The guidelines state that "no error can be attributed to the tool used," meaning a judge cannot deflect blame for a factual or legal mistake onto an algorithm. Because generative AI possesses neither "judgment nor conscience," the courts insist that the moral responsibility for every ruling must rest entirely with the human presiding over the case.
This requirement for human oversight is designed to protect the fundamental dignity of the legal process. The document stresses that judging is an "intrinsically human function" that requires deliberation and the exercise of moral responsibility—qualities a machine cannot replicate. By mandating that AI cannot be used for the "formulation of reasons for a decision," the courts are insulating the core of the legal process from the unpredictable nature of generative outputs.
The search for a secure, institutional AI tool
Significant technical and security gaps remain as the judiciary navigates the transition into the AI era. According to the report, there is currently no approved or secure institutional generative AI tool available for judicial use in Quebec. This leaves a vacuum where judges must rely on existing, third-party tools that often operate via opaque algorithms.
To mitigate these risks, the guidelines warn judges against providing AI tools with draft judgments, notes on ongoing cases, or any information protected by law. Until a secure, authorized system is provided, judges must also ensure that their settings prevent any entered data from being used to train or improve external AI models, thereby protecting judicial confidentiality and data security.
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