Artificial Intelligence, Autonomy, and Criminal Liability in India
Gaurav Yadav · 2026
This chapter explores the idea of growing adoption of AI in various industries and its criminal liability. When autonomous AI systems operate at their own discretion, current laws such as those in Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita suffer from a lack of specificity. We may soon find out that we ourselves are dealing with fully autonomous technologies which have the capacity to harm and injure us. Then, the question arises: what happens next? Who will be accountable for all this? Right now, there is no answer to this question, and we find ourselves totally dependent on artificial intelligence. This chapter highlights the legal and social entanglement of criminal liability as it is applied to the complex nature of industrial robots. It also shows that traditional criminal law and legal theory are not well-positioned with the existing robotic system; there are many other practical implications that come in the way, which cannot be solved by the robotic system. The possibility of creating artificial intelligence as equal to human intelligence or much more than that sounds quite alluring, but it is a far-fetched goal. As the AI systems can only create robots which work on behalf of humans, they cannot match the human mind in solving practical problems and cannot defeat humans in their practicality. While making such robots, sometimes they work against the nature of mankind, which can be harmful to the public and abrogatory to the laws in force. The main question which arises is whether AI can be held liable for criminal liability for its actions. As the latter is subject to the legal relations in the future, can it also be held liable? It will not take long enough for AI to completely take over human work, as now it has taken up almost all the basic tasks performed by humans. So when it takes up all the human work, then it will evolve to the status of “electronic persons” from simple tools. So there will be a hustle as to whether to hold an “electronic person” liable for any kind of criminal liability or not. The escalated use of AI highlighted the absence of a specific legal procedure which can take action on the autonomous work of artificial intelligence and its damages. This shows significant gaps in criminal law, as there is a lack of identification of responsible parties for the crimes committed by these technologies and an evaluation of these factors in the criminal justice system. This study focuses on all the above legal questions within the framework of fundamental principles and criminal law. The paper analyses the conflict between the privileges of lawmaking and the criminal responsibility of lawmakers in India and how the constitutional protection of legislators overlaps with the rules of law.