Artificial Intelligence in International Arbitration: Procedural Fairness, Transparency, and the Future of the Arbitrator's Role

Abstract

Generative artificial intelligence (AI) is being used more and more in international arbitration for legal research, document analysis, translation, drafting, transcription and other case management functions. Arbitral institutions and professional bodies have mostly responded with soft-law guidance, while national courts are starting to confront the professional and adjudicative risks of hallucinated authorities and inadequate human verification. This article questions the extent to which current international arbitration law can accommodate material use of AI without undermining the personal decision-making mandate of the tribunal, procedural fairness, confidentiality and enforceability of awards. It takes a doctrinal and comparative approach, analysing the New York Convention, the UNCITRAL Model Law and Arbitration Rules, contemporary institutional rules and AI guidance, as well as recent national adjudicative materials from the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada and India. The article draws a distinction between AI for administrative or organisational assistance, and AI for evidentiary analysis, substantive legal reasoning, drafting of reasons and autonomous decision-making. It points to the possibility that existing technology-neutral arbitration instruments can accommodate a large portion of low and medium risk assistance, but that the autonomous or insufficiently supervised use of AI may implicate existing requirements relating to the right to be heard, tribunal mandate, agreed procedure, confidentiality and recognition or enforcement. The right regulatory response is a risk-based approach to regulation that emphasises human accountability, independent verification, calibrated disclosure, data-security safeguards and institutional procedural guidance. The article considers the nature of national court guidance as a form of comparative evidence, rather than a source of direct arbitration law, and explores the circumstances in which additional institutional or UNCITRAL level guidance might be justified.