Lawyer Peter Haynes, counsel for former president Rodrigo Duterte, accused the prosecution at the International Criminal Court (ICC) of relying on artificial intelligence (AI) rather than manually reviewing the entire dataset related to Duterte’s crimes against humanity case.
During the fourth status conference on Tuesday, October 13, Haynes questioned the prosecution’s handling of the evidence, claiming that the dataset had not been fully examined by humans.
“The prosecution haven’t done it humanly, they’ve effectively passed it through an AI machine,” Haynes said.
ICC Prosecutor Julian Nicholls strongly disputed the allegation, insisting that analysts had reviewed the entire dataset, while lawyers had manually examined portions of it.
“I have to object. That is completely untrue. He keeps saying that. We have gone through this data set by analysts who’ve gone through all of it, lawyers some of it, page by page, human, manual, 100%. He keeps saying that. It’s not true,” Nicholls said.
The exchange took place as the ICC continued proceedings in Duterte’s case, which involves charges of crimes against humanity in connection with his administration’s anti-drug campaign.
The fourth status conference forms part of the preparations for Duterte’s trial, scheduled to begin on November 30. The allegations and arguments raised during the proceedings remain subject to consideration by the court.
