bengaluru the supreme court scripted history this week by deploying an artificial intelligence aibased tool to start live transcription of proceedings the move which is said to modernise the legal landscape using technology has a bengaluru connectionthree bengalureans vikas mahendra his brother vinay mahendra and brotherinlaw badarivishal kinhal have developed teres technology enabled resolution the ai engine that converted court arguments into text during live proceedings pertaining to the constitution bench hearing on the maharashtra political controversy on tuesday february 21 by the end of the day the apex court officially published the transcript on its website though undertaken on an experimental basis legal luminaries endorsed it as a technologyfirst approach to legal transcription that would increase accountability and transparency as every word in the court gets recordedit has been an interesting and dramatic ride said 37yearold vikas an arbitration specialist who has worked in several countries including singapore and cofounder of citybased nomology technology private limited in countries like the us uk and singapore there is live transcription of arbitration proceedings but that is not the case in india five years ago while at the dinner table i was discussing with vinay and kinhal the need for introducing technological solutions to transcribe hearings and thus teres was born using ais natural language processing capabilities we started converting speech into text he explained vinay who was an engineering graduate from rv college took charge of the technology aspect and kinhal became the operations headbut their journey took an interesting turn during the delhi arbitration weekend held from february 16 to 19 where chief justice of india dy chandrachud emphasised on transcription services in legal proceedings it was at the same event that we were doing live transcription and cji chandrachud was pleasantly surprised when he heard about it he called us and asked if we could do transcription on a trial basis for the constitution bench comprising five judges that was deciding maharashtras political controversy we decided to take a plunge and the cji who was committed to reforming the legal landscape got his men to act at lightning speed we cancelled our return trip to bengaluru stayed back and set up the infrastructure on tuesday the court transcript was published for the first time vikas said the feedback has been excellent and the high courts of karnataka odisha and kerala have shown interest he addedabout the transcription technology vikas said it is a winwin for all stakeholders first lawyers have to be cautious while arguing the case and have to choose and weigh their words which will ensure accountability second clients will have a better idea of what their lawyer is speaking third judges cannot make flippant remarks fourth lawyers can ensure t all their arguments are taken note of this apart transcription plays a major role in multiday hearings as it becomes easy for lawyers to refer to the notes on arguments in the last hearing it also improves the judicial system as it provides a window for