Serious Fraud Office hires 'artificial intelligence lawyer'

It previously piloted similar technology developed by Canadian firm OpenText during its four-year investigation into fraud at Rolls-Royce which involved reviewing 30 million documents. The SFO said that technology was up to 80% cheaper than using outside counsel to review those documents and identify legally privileged material. OpenText, the "AI lawyer", goes "further than just flagging legally privileged material" an SFO spokesperson told Sky News. "It can also scan and organise information from multiple document types - PowerPoint, Outlook calendar invites, Word documents etc - displaying the information relevant to an investigation on a timeline for an investigator to then review." The SFO told Sky News they expect the system to cost "around £12m over the expected lifetime of 7 years - which is offset against the savings the new tech will bring by enhancing our ability to review and investigate in a targeted way, without solely relying on human review."