Turkey introduces AI ‘terror group predictor’ for judges, prosecutors

The Justice Ministry has made an artificial intelligence system available to judges and prosecutors that analyzes case files and predicts which designated organization a case may be linked to.

The Justice Ministry’s Information Technologies Directorate General said in a Jun 26 announcement through an internal system for judicial officials and legal proffessionals that it developed the AI-powered “CBS Organization Prediction Project” to reduce incorrect or incomplete entries concerning organizations in judicial records.

The system analyzes information contained in case files and automatically compares it with data on “terrorist organizations” registered in the ministry’s system, according to the directorate.

“The project, developed with our domestic and national resources, analyzes the case file and predicts which organization it may be linked to based on the information in the file, preventing incorrect or incomplete organization records,” the directorate said.

The ministry said the system was designed to assist judges and prosecutors during judicial proceedings by reducing human error and incomplete data entry.

The directorate added that it would continue developing similar AI-based projects.

Journalist says questions were ‘AI-generated’

Yıldız Tar, a journalist and an LGBTI+ activist who spent several weeks in pretrial detention recently, suspects the system might have been used during a widespread crackdown ahead of the Jul 7-8 NATO summit in Ankara, which saw over 200 people detained.

The suspects, including journalists, academics, environmental colunteers and students, were accused of being a member of the Communist Party of Turkey/Marxist-Leninist (TKP/ML), an armed group that has largely been inactive for years.

“They announced this AI organization thing on Jun 26, when we were detained. It went unnoticed at the time. After I was questioned by the gendarmerie, I had said, ‘The questions they asked me were generated by AI’,” Tar wrote on social media yesterday. “The absurdity of the NATO arrests, which were a pilot for this system, is clear. We must not allow AI to be used to assign people to organizations. Otherwise, we will find ourselves in a joke that isn’t funny. 

(VK)