Technology is advancing the way that court reporting is handled in United States Courts, and technology is being instituted in courts around the world.
China is so invested in the legal aspects of future technological developments that it has set up an entire court system not only set up to deal with technology-related cases but also run by technology.
The Chinese government in Beijing has put into place an internet court powered by facial and speech recognition technology, the China Money Network reported. The goal of the new system is to provide more efficient legal services for the city’s fast-developing technology companies.
The Beijing Internet Court, which is located in Fengtai district, is primarily focused on hearing cases regarding the internet and intellectual property rights, including disputes caused by online loans, online shopping contracts and online copyright cases.
The average duration of an internet trial is 41 days, about half that of a conventional court trial in China, and a hearing lasts 28 minutes, whichis 60 percent.
Beijing’s internet court is the second in the country. An internet court was opened in 2017 in Hangzhou, and China plans to set up a third internet court in Guangzhou.
“The judges and all the parties are connected via a screen, where the plaintiffs and the defendants can participate in court hearings via their computers or mobile-phones,” Zhu Ting, a judge at the Beijing Internet Court, told state-owned Chinese media outlet Xinhua News Agency.
The court uses facial recognition and speech recognition technology during the online proceedings that draws on a national ID system curated by the country’s public security bureaus to verify participants’ identities. Electronic signatures are used to sign any documents.
The Beijing internet court also can automatically generate legal documents, use machine translation and allow voice interactions with its knowledge system.
According to Xinhaua, Beijing handled 45,382 internet-related cases including online shopping and online service contracts in 2017. In the eight months from January to August 2018, cases increased to 37,631, with a growth rate of nearly 25 percent.
