Defence
Legal research, analysis and drafting support
‘LegalFundi’ — a South African law-tech non-profit committed to improving access to justice through technology solutions — is offering an AI-powered legal assistant named Maya, which provides free, accessible, and understandable legal guidance via WhatsApp. In the context of gender-based violence, the tool can provide advice to victims on how to report a crime and apply for a protection order. The information Maya provides, which is not limited to criminal proceedings, is grounded in the Paralegal Manual 2025, jointly published by LegalFundi, the Education & Training Unit, Social Change Assistance Trust, and Black Sash. Users can get direct references to chapters from this manual. Over 50,000 conversations have taken place via Maya, with a monthly user base of around 7,000 individuals.
Another example is ‘My AI Lawyer’, an AI-powered commercial legal assistant offering legal support through a WhatsApp chatbot. Using a structured legal knowledge database, the Chatbot can draft basic letters, provide relevant legal provisions, and suggest next steps, while cautioning users to seek professional validation in complex cases.
Juta is an advanced legal research platform that leverages AI and data analysis tools to assist law firms and legal organisations in accessing and analysing legal documents. The system offers in-depth insights into legislation and case law, helping professionals efficiently conduct research and retrieve resources for cases.
LexisNexis Protege, an AI legal research assistant, is also available to lawyers in South Africa.
Victims
Under South African criminal procedure rules, victims generally do not have standing as formal parties in criminal proceedings. Criminal matters are ordinarily conducted between the State and the accused. The Criminal Procedure Act 51 of 1977 (CPA) regulates the role of victims in criminal cases, including their participation in giving evidence and the possibility of restitution. While victims may participate in a limited capacity, such as acting as witnesses and providing victim impact statements at sentencing to inform the court of the harm suffered, they are not parties to the proceedings in the same manner as the prosecution or the defence. Victims are, however, entitled to certain rights under the Service Charter for Victims of Crime in South Africa, including the right to fair treatment; to be kept informed of the progress of the case, including arrests and court outcomes; to be protected from intimidation and further harm; to make victim impact statements during sentencing; to seek restitution or compensation; and to access support services such as counselling, medical care, and shelter. In limited circumstances, a victim (or certain interested parties) may acquire legal standing by instituting a private prosecution under the CPA.
As at April 2026, there are no reported cases of victims using AI in criminal proceedings in South Africa.
TRAINING
There is no formalised system in place to train judges, advocates or other lawyers on the use of AI, but specific judges are offering training courses through the South African Judicial Education Institute (providing training to judges, magistrates, and aspiring judicial office holders) on virtual courts, cybercrime, and electronic evidence. In August 2025, the Legal Practice Council, a statutory body established to regulate the legal profession in South Africa, held a webinar on ‘The use of AI tools in legal research and legal practice’. The webinar addressed a growing number of incidents in which legal practitioners were found to have used non-existent hallucinated case law retrieved using generative AI tools.
In March 2025, referring to the future of AI as a potential ‘boon and threat to legal practitioners’, the Legal Practice Council had embedded information and communication technology (ICT) training into the official admission examination syllabus for 2026.
While there is currently no formalised system in place to train judges, advocates or lawyers on the use of AI or the detection of deepfakes, commentators have recognised the need for reform in South Africa, including enhanced judicial education and training on the topics.
REGULATION
South Africa has not yet adopted any laws, judicial guidelines or protocols that address the use of AI in judicial proceedings. The Department of Communications and Digital Technologies’ Draft National AI Strategy may also pave the way for regulation of the use of AI in court once finalised (see 'Outlook' below). In the meantime, a number of laws and guidelines that do not specifically target AI regulate its use in criminal proceedings.
Guidelines for practitioners
Code of Conduct for Legal Practitioners
The South African Code of Conduct for All Legal Practitioners, Candidate Legal Practitioners and Juristic Entities sets out principles that must be observed in the practice of law. In respect of ethical duties, the Code of Conduct speaks in broad terms to the competency and skills of a legal practitioner, including the general duty to act with necessary skill, care and diligence. The Code of Conduct also sets out the general ethical and professional principles in relation to confidentiality, an attorney’s responsibility for ‘proper control and supervision over his or her staff and offices’, and the requirement to ‘maintain the highest standards of honesty and integrity’. While the Code of Conduct does not mention AI tools, the courts have applied it when considering legal practitioners’ obligations in the context of fake case citations or hallucinations generated using AI tools in a number of civil cases (see below).
South Africa has not adopted a formal AI policy and does not currently require the disclosure of AI use under existing professional or procedural rules. Neither the South African Code of Conduct for Legal Practitioners nor the criminal procedure rules require parties to disclose whether AI tools were used during investigations, evidence review, disclosure, or court proceedings.
Further, there is also no general requirement to disclose that AI was used, to name the AI tool, or to reveal prompts, algorithms, or other technical details. While laws such as POPIA and ECTA (see below) regulate how personal information is processed and how electronic evidence is treated in court, they do not require transparency about AI-assisted processes. However, from a best practice perspective legal practices have implemented AI-use notifications in their client engagement agreements.
Criminal procedure rules
Electronic Communications and Transactions Act, 2002
The Electronic Communications and Transactions Act (Act 25 of 2002) ('ECTA') regulates electronic communications in South Africa. It requires that a data message ‘must be given due evidential weight’. Specifically, section 15 of ECTA provides that, generally (i.e. not limited to the context of criminal proceedings), ‘the rules of evidence must not be applied so as to deny the admissibility of a data message’ into evidence because (i) it is a data message, or (ii) if a data message is the best evidence that can be adduced, the fact that ‘it is not in its original form’. A data message is defined as ‘data generated, sent, received or stored by electronic means’, including voice and any other electronically stored record. Section 15 was enacted to ensure that data messages are given their full evidential weight by placing electronic information on the same footing as traditional paper-based evidence. Section 15 of ECTA may also be construed as applicable to the regulation of AI in criminal proceedings.
There is a growing view in South Africa that existing laws may need to be updated to better address the use of AI tools in criminal proceedings, particularly where AI-generated or AI-assisted evidence is involved. Commentators have suggested that legislation such as the Cybercrimes Act and POPIA may require amendment to deal more directly with the creation, spread, and evidentiary use of synthetic digital content.
These concerns have also been raised at a policy level. In its final report published in August 2025, the National Anti-Corruption Advisory Council highlighted the increasing risk posed by AI-generated and manipulated digital material to democratic institutions and the administration of justice, signalling a broader need for reform as AI use becomes more widespread.
Criminal Procedure Act 1977
The chain of custody is central to establishing the relevance and reliability of evidence, as it documents the continuous and secure handling of evidence from collection to presentation in court. While the Criminal Procedure Act 51 of 1977 (CPA) does not explicitly define the concept of ‘chain of custody,’ several provisions implicitly support its legal significance. Section 210 of the CPA states that ’no evidence as to any fact shall be admissible which is irrelevant or immaterial,’ thereby affirming that all evidence must be both relevant and reliable to be admitted. A compromised chain of custody may cast doubt on whether evidence remains what it purports to be, undermining its reliability and admissibility. This is particularly significant in the context of digital evidence, where the ECTA places emphasis on the integrity and reliability of electronic data (see above). Accordingly, a properly maintained chain of custody underpins both the relevance and reliability of evidence in South African criminal proceedings.
Data protection legislation
Protection of Personal Information Act
The Protection of Personal Information Act (Act 4 of 2013) regulates the processing of personal information or personal data by a responsible party (controller) or operator (processor). Modelled on similar EU legislation, the Act contains eight conditions for lawful processing which must be adhered to when managing personal information. Amongst these eight conditions is an obligation to adopt ‘appropriate reasonable technical and organisational measures’ to secure personal information against unlawful or unauthorised access. The Act also requires responsible parties to collect the minimum personal information required for the task at hand and an obligation not to retain records for ‘longer than is necessary for the purpose for which the information was collected or subsequently processed’. Even though the Act does not speak directly to the use of AI tools, it should apply equally to such use as the obligations on a responsible party in this regard are technology agnostic
Human rights
Provisions in national, regional and international human rights instruments may also be relevant to the regulation of AI in court. These include the right to privacy and the right to a fair trial in sections 14 and 35 of the South African Constitution, fair trial guarantees in article 7 of the African Charter on Human and Peoples Rights, and protections of the right to a fair trial and the right to privacy in articles 14 and 17 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and articles 16 and 40 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Outlook
South Africa National Artificial Intelligence Policy Framework
In 2024, the Department of Communications and Digital Technologies published the South Africa National Artificial Intelligence Policy Framework. (The Policy Framework is in line with the African Union’s 2024 Continental Strategy on AI, which encourages the ‘adoption and implementation of ethical principles for AI’.) South Africa has also actively been involved in discussions with UNESCO. Its 2025 AI Readiness Assessment Report recommended that South Africa should amend or develop legislation ‘to promote ethical and responsible AI’, ‘uphold data protection’, and establish ‘effective oversight mechanisms for redress … against AI-related harms’.)
South Africa's draft National AI Policy refers to international frameworks including the AU’s and UNESCO’s, but South Africa has not implemented the UNESCO Guidelines for the use of AI systems in courts and tribunals (2025).
The policy notes that its ‘underlying … imperative is to develop a comprehensive, inclusive, and ethically grounded national AI policy’ that ‘seeks to enable safe and secure adoption of AI technologies, while safeguarding rights and aligning with national values and international norms’. The policy suggests that in terms of AI deployment, priority should be given to AI ‘applications that directly improve service delivery in critical domains’, including ‘justice’. But the policy also ‘mandates clear accountability mechanisms’, requiring ‘developers and deployers to ‘provide sufficiently explainable AI outputs, especially in high-risk contexts such as … law enforcement’, with public-sector systems ‘to be held to higher standards of sufficient transparency and accountability’.
The policy states that the ‘regulatory framework aims to classify AI systems by risk levels and implement strict protections for critical infrastructure’ and that sector-specific guidelines are planned ‘for industries like law enforcement’. An ‘independent AI Ethics Board will be established to enforce ethical governance regarding bias and fairness, and ‘a National AI Commission/Office will coordinate policy development with input from government, industry, and civil society’. The policy also notes that ‘technical and legal remedies for Deep-fakes and Defamatory AI need to be established’.
The draft National AI policy was approved by Cabinet on 25 March 2026 and was subsequently gazetted for a 60-day public consultation on 10 April 2026 by the Department of Communications and Digital Technologies. However, the policy has since been withdrawn by the Minister of Communications and Digital Technologies following findings that it had been generated using AI and contained a number of fictitious sources attributed to hallucinated citations.
Draft Policy on AI for the Judiciary in South Africa
As at April 2026, the Office of the Chief Justice has released a Draft Policy on Artificial Intelligence for the Judiciary in South Africa for comment. The draft policy establishes a framework of binding standards for the responsible, ethical, secure, and transparent use of AI within the South African Judiciary.
The draft policy draws a clear distinction between adjudicative and administrative functions. AI is expressly prohibited from performing any adjudicative function, including evaluating evidence, assessing witness credibility, interpreting or applying the law, generating substantive legal reasoning, or determining bail, sentence, or risk assessments. By contrast, AI may be used for administrative and support tasks — such as summarising documents, transcription, translation, and formatting assistance — subject to human verification and oversight.
Where generative AI makes a material contribution to a document filed in court or published under judicial authority, the draft policy requires disclosure on the face of the document, identifying both the tool used and the nature of its contribution. Judicial officers remain personally responsible for the accuracy of all work issued under their authority and must independently verify all AI outputs against authoritative sources.
The draft policy also establishes an explainability requirement, under which any AI system deployed in the Judiciary must produce outputs that are intelligible and open to scrutiny, with compliance assessed as part of the procurement process. Additional procurement standards require that AI systems be assessed for bias — including racial, gender, linguistic, and socio-economic bias — and evaluated in a pilot environment before deployment.
Initiatives to regulate the use of AI in court
The Office of the Chief Justice from time to time also issues directives concerning the court management. In September 2025, the Chief Justice spoke out on the topic of AI and suggested that the courts must take an active role when it comes to the use of AI:
TOOLS
Tasks
Users
Scope
Training
Regulation
Cases
Insights
