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AI Assists Dutch Court in Drafting Criminal Verdicts

• Written by Kiara Fabbri Former Tech News Writer
• Fact-Checked by Sarah Frazier Former Content Manager

The Rotterdam District Court recently conducted an AI-assisted experiment for drafting the sentencing motivation of a criminal case.

In a rush? Here are the quick facts:

• Rotterdam Court tested AI as a writing aid for criminal verdicts.
• AI helped draft sentencing motivation, but judges made final decisions.
• No private case data was shared with AI during the trial.

The AI was not involved in the decision-making process, but was only used as a tool to help prepare the section explaining the court’s reasoning behind the punishment, as explained by the judiciary body, de Rechtspraak .

The court notified all parties immediately after the trial about AI implementation in the process while also releasing an official statement about the experiment, as explained by the NL Times .

AI used general case information to generate draft documents but judges together with the clerk reviewed these drafts before completing the sentencing motivation. AI did not take part in legal decision-making, or fact evaluation during the process.

NL Times explains that the AI tool accelerated drafting speed and improved text structure according to the judges who utilized it.

The court personnel who conducted the trial expressed favorable outcomes but they maintained their reservations about implementing public AI systems in judicial procedures, as noted by de Rechtspraak.

They observed that public AI tools operate with restricted input capabilities which diminishes their performance. Additionally, the use of public AI systems to share case details creates an ethical or legal risk because of potential disclosure of sensitive information.

To overcome these concerns, judges proposed implementing an internal secure AI system which would operate exclusively within judicial processes to resolve these problems.

The system would operate with only confidential information so that more detailed and relevant case information could be entered. A possible approach would be to establish a secure database of all publicly available criminal verdicts from the judiciary’s website. This database could assist the AI in generating more accurate sentencing drafts, as noted by de Rechtspraak.

However, the implementation of AI technology within judicial systems comes with certain risks. Indeed, AI-generated “hallucinations” which produce incorrect or fabricated data have become a legal problem in U.S. courts . In a recent example , Walmart lawyers used AI-generated fake cases during a lawsuit which led to potential sanctions. As a result, the legal community continues to express increasing doubts about AI system reliability.

Photo by Igor Omilaev on Unsplash

Chinese AI Startup Zhipu Launches Free AI Agent

• Written by Andrea Miliani Former Tech News Expert
• Fact-Checked by Sarah Frazier Former Content Manager

The Chinese AI startup Zhipu has launched this Monday a free AI agent called AutoGLM Rumination, capable of searching the web and performing tasks autonomously.

In a rush? Here are the quick facts:

• Chinese AI startup Zhipu launched a free AI agent, AutoGLM Rumination, capable of performing tasks autonomously.
• The agent is powered by GLM-Z1-Air, which Zhipu claims is more efficient than rival DeepSeek’s R1.
• The release intensifies AI competition in China and the world.

According to Reuters , Zhipu’s CEO Zhang Peng explained at an event in Beijing that the new agent can make decisions and operate independently to execute orders and instructions in multiple areas, such as travel planning.

AutoGLM is powered by the company’s AI models, including the reasoning model GLM-Z1-Air and GLM-4-Air-0414. Zhipu claims that its GLM-Z1-Air is more powerful than DeepSeek’s R1, one of its competitors, as it has similar capabilities and runs eight times faster and requires considerably fewer computer resources.

The release of the new AI agent at no cost increases AI competition in China and raises concerns for other AI startups in the region and the world.

The Chinese company Butterfly Effect recently gained attention after it released its first autonomous AI agent Manus AI . Videos of Manus’ performance went viral on a Discord community, challenging companies in Silicon Valley.

However, while Manus AI’s current rates start from $39 and can reach up to $200, AutoGLM Rumination is free through Zhipu’s official channels. Users will be able to test the AI agent through the mobile app and the website.

Just like with Manus and DeepSeek, the Chinese government is one of the investors in Zhipu. Just a few weeks ago, Zhipu announced a $137 million investment led by the state-backed firms Hangzhou City Investment Group Industrial Fund and Shangcheng Capital.

Zhipu was developed at the Tsinghua University laboratory, founded in 2019, and is now one of the leading AI startups in China.

Other American tech companies have also recently released AI agent models. A few days ago, Microsoft launched AI-powered security agents to detect cyberthreats and automate security tasks. In January, OpenAI introduced the autonomous AI agent Operator , available only to Pro users.