Alaska’s experiment with an in-house artificial intelligence chatbot was supposed to make the court system more accessible. Instead, it exposed how quickly AI tools can create confusion, raise legal risks, and undermine public trust when deployed in sensitive areas like criminal justice.

Alaska’s AI court chatbot: a cautionary tale for digital justice

Across the U.S., courts and government agencies are under pressure to modernize. Budgets are tight, workloads are heavy, and the public increasingly expects the same kind of digital services they get from banks or retailers. Against this backdrop of rapid AI market growth and government tech experimentation, Alaska’s court system tried something ambitious: building its own AI chatbot to help people navigate legal information.

The goal sounded reasonable. Many Alaskans live in remote communities and struggle to access lawyers, court clerks, or even basic legal guidance. An online assistant, available 24/7, could answer routine questions and help people find forms or understand procedures. But when the chatbot went live, it quickly became clear that good intentions were not enough to protect people from inaccurate, misleading, or incomplete answers.

How Alaska’s AI chatbot was supposed to work

The Alaska Court System created the chatbot to respond to common questions from self-represented litigants and the general public. The tool was designed to:

• Guide users to official court forms and resources
• Explain basic legal processes in plain language
• Reduce the burden on overworked clerks and call centers
• Improve access to justice in a geographically vast state

Instead of relying on an off-the-shelf commercial system, the court system worked with a contractor to build a custom AI tool. It was trained on publicly available court information, and the intent was that it would only provide general legal information — not personalized legal advice.

But as other deployments of generative AI have shown, drawing a clear line between “information” and “advice” is difficult in practice, especially when people are scared, facing deadlines, or dealing with criminal charges.

Where things started to go wrong

The chatbot’s rollout quickly revealed serious flaws. According to the original reporting, the system:

• Sometimes provided answers that conflicted with official court rules or procedures
• Gave responses that could be interpreted as legal advice, despite disclaimers
• Handled questions about criminal cases in ways that raised alarms among legal experts

Even small inaccuracies can be high-stakes in a court setting. A missed deadline, a misunderstood requirement, or an incorrect assumption about a criminal record can change the outcome of a case. In this context, “close enough” is not good enough.

The situation reflects a broader tension in the justice system: courts want to use technology to increase efficiency and fairness, but they also have a duty to protect the due process rights of people who may not understand that an AI chatbot can be wrong.

The special risks of AI in criminal and civil justice

AI tools in courts are not entirely new. Risk assessment algorithms, document review systems, and e-filing platforms have been in use for years. But conversational AI introduces a new level of risk because it:

• Feels authoritative: Users may assume the system is “official” and fully accurate, especially when it appears on a government website.
• Blurs the line between info and advice: A natural-language answer can sound like a recommendation even if framed as general guidance.
• Is prone to “hallucinations”: Generative AI can produce confident but false statements, which are particularly dangerous in legal contexts.

These risks intersect with longstanding concerns about fairness and equity in the legal system. People who cannot afford a lawyer are more likely to rely on free online tools. If those tools are unreliable, the burden falls disproportionately on low-income individuals and marginalized communities.

At the same time, broader economic outlook pressures on state budgets and the push for digital transformation make courts eager to adopt new technology. The challenge is ensuring that innovation does not come at the expense of accuracy and justice.

Why disclaimers are not enough

Like many AI services, the Alaska court chatbot included disclaimers stating that it did not provide legal advice. But as legal experts have repeatedly argued, disclaimers often fail in practice:

• Users rarely read or fully understand them.
• People in crisis may grasp at any apparent help, regardless of warnings.
• The presence of government branding can overshadow fine-print caveats.

In other industries, such as finance or healthcare, regulators are already grappling with how to oversee AI tools that influence high-stakes decisions. Courts, which are central to constitutional rights and the rule of law, face similar regulatory questions but with even more direct implications for liberty and due process.

What Alaska’s experience signals for other courts

Alaska’s troubled rollout is likely to become a reference point in debates over AI in the public sector. It illustrates several key lessons for other states and agencies considering similar tools:

• Human oversight is essential: AI systems in courts must be carefully monitored, tested, and audited, with clear mechanisms for correcting errors.
• Narrow, well-defined use cases are safer: Limiting AI to tasks like document search or form-filling may be less risky than open-ended legal Q&A.
• Transparency matters: Courts need to be clear about how these tools work, what data they use, and where their limits lie.
• Access to justice must remain the core goal: Technology should supplement, not replace, human assistance — especially for vulnerable users.

As generative AI becomes more embedded in daily life, the temptation to automate complex public services will grow. Policymakers will have to balance the promise of efficiency and cost savings with the reality that, in law and criminal justice, mistakes can mean lost freedom, lost housing, or lost custody of children — outcomes that no chatbot should casually influence.

Alaska’s experience is a reminder that in the rush to modernize, courts cannot outsource their responsibility for accuracy, fairness, and the protection of rights. AI can help broaden access to legal information, but only if it is deployed with rigorous safeguards, clear limits, and a deep respect for the stakes involved.

Reference Sources

NBC News – Alaska’s court system built an AI chatbot. It didn’t go smoothly.