Guilt By Code: The Legal Maze Of AI-Driven Crime
- IJLLR Journal
- Oct 19
- 2 min read
Harshwardhan Singh Gupta, BBA LLB (Hons.), ICFAI Law School, Hyderabad
Khushi Jain, BBA LLB (Hons.), ICFAI Law School, Hyderabad
ABSTRACT
The rise of advanced and autonomous artificial intelligence systems has posed new challenges to the core principles underlying criminal law. While depicting the foundational traditional frameworks based on human agency, identifying culpability, intent (mens rea), and voluntary action (actus reus), these principles of criminal law are placed under the intensity of machines that can operate independently, generate harmful content, or facilitate criminal conduct without direct human inspection. This paper examines the emerging legal quandary surrounding artificial intelligence that can be held accountable, focusing on whether artificial intelligence systems can be held responsible and, if so, on a conjectural basis.
This paper involves three models of AI, which are examined as follows: as an autonomous tool used by humans, as an accomplice aiding or encouraging criminal conduct, and as a potentially autonomous person who may act on their own. This paper depicts the study on the comparative legal developments, including the European Union’s Artificial Intelligence Act, regulatory debates in the United States, and the current inadequacies within Indian criminal statutes, especially the BNS, 2023, and also examines the limits of existing difficulties in understanding the core principles. It also examines the difficulties of criminal liability, by offering solutions in the corporate criminal liability and or strict liability.
The enormous growth of artificial intelligence, which is very advanced and autonomous, in a manner that has raised important questions on the progressive nature of artificial intelligence by providing the opportunity to reconsider the criminal liability in the modern-day decision-making process. The configuration of this paper is based on preliminary proposals for revamping domestic legal structures, enhancing regulatory oversight, and establishing principal standards for accusation where the criminal responsibility of humans and machines intersect.
