Justice: the CSM grants Copilot access to court documents
However, the issues highlighted must be rectified. The judiciary at a disadvantage
The CSM has updated its guidelines on artificial intelligence. Following a resolution approved by the plenary session, the Council takes note of the results of the trial of Microsoft 365 Copilot conducted by the Ministry of Justice and finalises a set of new recommendations following its initial statement on 8 October 2025. The resolution, whilst reaffirming the fundamental principles regarding artificial intelligence, acknowledges that the Ministry has obtained various technical assurances from the supplier regarding the Copilot product, such as the storage of data in data centres located in Italia, the isolation of the Ministry of Justice’s tenant from all other tenants, and the absence of training.
The opening of the CSM
On the basis of these safeguards, the CSM is open to extending the use of Copilot to activities relating to judicial documents, provided that best practice is followed in anonymising the documents, that Copilot is used solely via the Ministry’s tenant, that there is mandatory human supervision of outputs and structured workflows, that structured prompts are used, and that adequate training is provided.
At the same time, the resolution highlights Copilot’s shortcomings, such as its tendency to use unverified data and to generate ‘hallucinations’, and its failure to report the limitations encountered when gathering information. Among the reported cases, a prime example is the result of the survey carried out on 29 April 2026, in which Copilot included a reference to a non-existent municipality whilst cataloguing lists of real estate assets within a secure institutional environment.
Focus on the judiciary
Furthermore, the tool tends to provide definitive answers rather than highlighting the limitations encountered during the data collection phase, ‘automatically filling in the gaps through inferences not supported by documentary evidence’. The resolution then highlights the disadvantaged position of the judiciary: compared with a generalist model such as that provided by the Ministry, other legal professionals often have systems specifically designed for the legal sector, with adequate guarantees of traceability and reference to sources.
The resolution therefore emphasises the need to adopt artificial intelligence specifically designed for the judicial function and to establish a joint CSM-Ministry framework for the testing of artificial intelligence systems.
