1. Legal enviroment

The European Union's regulation on artificial intelligence, the EU AI Act, was adopted in 2024 and will be gradually implemented from 2026. Its aim is to ensure that AI systems operating in the EU market are safe, transparent, and based on the principles of the rule of law. The legislator takes a risk-based approach, distinguishing between low, medium, high, and prohibited risk AI systems.

Artificial intelligence is playing an increasingly important role in the legal field, particularly in court proceedings and alternative dispute resolution. AI can ensure efficiency and accessibility in case allocation, legal research, evidence assessment, and even the automation of online dispute resolution platforms. At the same time, issues of algorithmic bias, data protection, and liability raise serious legal and ethical challenges.

2. Online dispute resolution platforms

Online dispute resolution (ODR) has become one of the most important tools for e-commerce and cross-border consumer disputes in recent years. The ODR platform operated by the European Commission has long enabled consumers and businesses to settle their disputes online without resorting to court proceedings.

The use of artificial intelligence can further speed up these processes and automate case management, for example by:

• automatically recognizing the subject of a complaint using natural language processing;
• making proposals for settlement solutions;
• predicting the likely outcome based on decisions in similar cases.

In this way, AI not only increases efficiency, but can also contribute to equal access to justice, especially in cases involving smaller amounts.

3. Bias and fairness

One of the most controversial issues surrounding artificial intelligence is algorithmic bias, or bias. If an AI system is trained with data that contains distorted patterns—such as social, gender, or ethnic imbalances—the system's decisions may also be distorted.

In court or dispute resolution processes, this can have serious consequences, as AI can affect the fairness of decision-making. The EU AI Act therefore stipulates the following for high-risk systems:

• the obligation of transparency and documentability;
• the maintenance of human oversight;
• regular auditing and testing of algorithms to avoid discrimination.

In practice, this means that judicial decision support systems cannot replace human judgment, but can only complement it.

4. Responsibility and data protection

The use of artificial intelligence raises the question: who is responsible if an AI system makes a wrong decision? Under the current legal framework, responsibility typically lies with the operator, developer, or organization using the system, but depending on the specific case, the allocation of responsibility can be complex.

In addition, AI systems handle large amounts of personal data, the processing of which is governed by the provisions of the GDPR. Lawful data processing requires:

• the principles of purpose limitation and data minimization;
• adequate information for data subjects;
• the implementation of data security measures.

In the case of AI systems used in court proceedings, it is particularly important that data processing does not violate the right to a fair trial and that the decisions of the algorithm are verifiable and justifiable.

5. Innovative solutions

The legal technology sector is rapidly developing solutions that use AI to increase the efficiency of legal services and dispute resolution. Some promising areas of development include:

• Predictive analytics: making predictions about the outcome of cases based on previous judgments.
• Automatic document generation: preparing statements of claim, contracts, and submissions with AI support.
• Virtual mediators: AI-driven systems that help parties reach compromises.

These innovations will not replace the work of lawyers in the future, but will support it—enabling lawyers and judges to spend more time on real legal value creation and strategic decision-making.

The EU AI Act marks a new era in the digitization of justice and dispute resolution. Artificial intelligence offers significant opportunities in terms of efficiency, accessibility, and objectivity, but its use is subject to strict legal, ethical, and data protection safeguards.