Exploring Digital Transformation of India’s Consumer Grievance Redressal System through GenAI

Project with Meta, IIT Bombay & the Department of Consumer Affairs.

In November 2023, the National Law School of India University announced a new research project on consumer law with the support of Meta. This project will assess how large language models (LLM) can be used for building public solutions for enhancing efficiency in India’s consumer grievance redressal system. The project is being executed along with the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IIT Bombay), in collaboration with the Department Of Consumer Affairs (DoCA) as the knowledge partner.

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. With the goal of enhancing efficiency, the chatbot will be designed to guide consumers on the procedural aspects of drafting a complaint and answering questions relating to consumer law in India. The decision assist tool in this research also will be designed to support searching case laws and summarisation of documents to provide assistance to judicial authorities in the area of consumer affairs.

The research project will explore how LLMs can assist consumers or judicial authorities in the context of ongoing oversight and control by human decision makers. In keeping with the commitment to responsible innovation, NLSIU and IIT Bombay will also release a white paper explaining the risk mitigation approaches implemented and how responsible design principles have been deployed at every layer of stack.

At the launch of the project, Prof. Sudhir Krishnaswamy, Vice-Chancellor of National Law School of India University said, “The National Law School of India University is committed to academic research and legal innovation using Artificial Intelligence to aid legal system reform. This project on consumer law aims to enhance awareness on 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. We will work to ensure that the material fed into the model is relevant, reliable, and user-friendly. Additionally, we will develop a prototype of a decision-assist tool to support efficient consumer dispute resolution. We look forward to working with Meta, IIT Bombay and the Dept. of Consumer Affairs on this exciting initiative that marks a significant step towards transformative legal reforms in India.”

Research Posts:

• Legal Applications and Implications of Large Language Models
  Authored by Project Interns: Mohit Kumar Meena, Suresh Gehlot, Aman Sunil Patidar, Suraj Harish, Meenal Jain.
• The Disadvantages and Limitations of Using Large Language Models in the Field of Law
  Authored by Project Interns: Jerrin B. Mathew, Sannah Mudbidri, Sanika Atul Tapre, Banisethi Aashrita