Meta, on Tuesday, announced its support for a research project by the National Law School of India University (NLSIU), which will allow the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) in legal processes.

The initiative, conducted in collaboration with IIT Bombay and the Department of Consumer Affairs (DoCA), aims to assess the application of large language models (LLM) in enhancing the efficiency of India's consumer grievance redressal system.

“The research initiative will explore the feasibility of leveraging Llama 2, Meta’s openly available large language model, in creating and evaluating a proof of concept of a citizen-centric chatbot and a decision-assist tool in the area of consumer law,” the company said in a statement.

The chatbot aims to guide consumers through the procedural aspects of drafting complaints, providing information about consumer law in India. Simultaneously, the decision-assist tool will support the search for case laws and summarisation of documents, offering assistance to judicial authorities dealing with consumer affairs.

Meta added that NLSIU and IIT Bombay will also release a white paper outlining the risk mitigation approaches employed and the deployment of responsible design principles at every layer of the stack.

“This project on consumer law aims to enhance awareness of consumer rights and to provide accessible assistance by leveraging Llama2. With our expertise in interdisciplinary research, NLSIU is uniquely positioned to help pioneer these legal applications employing large language models. We will create a rich corpus of Indian legal resources to map the landscape of consumer disputes in the country, and use this corpus to train the Llama model,” Professor Sudhir Krishnaswamy, Vice-Chancellor of the National Law School of India University, said at the launch event.

Rohit Kumar Singh, Secretary of the Department of Consumer Affairs, highlighted the government's commitment to creating a safe environment for consumers. “The launch of the research project is a step forward in our efforts to evaluate innovation solutions using generative AI for enhancing consumer rights and awareness, underpinning our efforts on consumer protection in India,” he said.

Joel Kaplan, Vice President, Global Policy at Meta, underscored Meta's commitment to exploratory research, open science, and collaboration with academic and industry partners, saying, “We’re excited to extend our support to NLSIU for its research initiatives building AI tools leveraging Llama 2. As more researchers, developers and startups build and experiment on our technology, the more we can learn about use cases, safe model deployment, and potential opportunities.”

Professor Pushpak Bhattacharyya from IIT Bombay, an expert in Natural Language Processing and Machine Learning, hailed LLMs, especially Meta's Llama 2, as a groundbreaking development in AI with immense potential for social benefit.

(Edited by : Amrita)