“ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AS A TOOL FOR EVIDENCE AND INVESTIGATION IN INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL LAW”
AUTHOR – SHILPI KUMARI, ADVOCATE & LLM STUDENT AT AMITY UNIVERSITY PATNA
BEST CITATION – SHILPI KUMARI, “ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AS A TOOL FOR EVIDENCE AND INVESTIGATION IN INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL LAW”, INDIAN JOURNAL OF LEGAL REVIEW (IJLR), 6 (5) OF 2026, PG. 543-559, APIS – 3920 – 0001 & ISSN – 2583-2344.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is changing how international criminal investigators collect, sort, authenticate, and present evidence. The shift is driven by the digital turn in atrocity documentation: conflicts now generate enormous volumes of user-generated videos, social-media posts, satellite images, geolocation data, intercepted communications, and sensor-derived material. International criminal law (ICL), however, remains anchored in fair-trial guarantees, adversarial testing, and cautious evidentiary assessment. This article examines AI as a practical investigative tool rather than as a substitute decision-maker. It argues that AI is most valuable in five functions: triage of large datasets, pattern detection, linkage analysis, authenticity checks, and courtroom visualization. Drawing on recent ICC practice, open-source investigation standards, and contemporary scholarship, the article shows that AI can strengthen accountability when deployed inside a rigorous legal framework. Yet it also identifies serious risks: bias in training data, black-box outputs, synthetic media, privacy intrusions, chain-of-custody gaps, and unequal technological capacities between prosecution and defense. The central claim is that AI should be used as an assistive layer under strong human oversight. In ICL, the measure of success is not whether AI is impressive, but whether it produces evidence that is reliable, explainable, contestable, and consistent with the rights of the accused and the interests of victims.