Knowledge Management News
More newsChatting away your protection – Are you waiving legal privilege when you use AI?
Generative artificial intelligence tools such as ChatGPT, Claude and Copilot, to name a few, have become a routine feature of modern business operations. Today’s executives and employees increasingly use these tools to summarise documents, brainstorm strategies, draft correspondence, analyse risks and mitigate exposure. Yet the rapid adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) raises an urgent and largely unresolved question for South African clients: can the use of AI tools compromise the legal privilege that protects confidential communications with lawyers?
Artificial intelligence and access to justice in South Africa
South Africa’s justice system faces a profound challenge. Despite constitutional guarantees that every person has the right to have any dispute that can be resolved by the application of law decided in a fair public hearing before a court, the reality for millions of South Africans is that legal redress remains practically inaccessible. The barriers are manifold: prohibitive legal costs, geographic remoteness from courts and legal services, lengthy delays in case resolution, and a shortage of legal practitioners willing or able to serve lower-income communities.
A practical guide to AI governance for businesses
Artificial intelligence (AI) is compressing decision cycles across every professional workflow. In some instances, businesses are deploying AI agents: systems capable of executing tasks and making decisions autonomously, without direct human intervention. This acceleration has consequences for how human judgement is exercised, how accountability operates and how risk accumulates.