SLOVENIA Trends and Developments Contributed by: Vesna Cukrov and Veronika Cukrov, Law Firm Cukrov (Odvetniška družba Cukrov o.p., d.o.o.)
• parties must not be taken by surprise. The VIAC Note on the Use of AI in Arbitration Pro - ceedings illustrates the approach well. It is deliber - ately concise and expressly non-binding; where it conflicts with the Vienna Rules, the Rules prevail. It declines to define AI at all, on the reasoning that any fixed definition would be overtaken by the technology within a year. On disclosure, the Note is permissive rather than man - datory: arbitrators may, in their discretion, inform the parties of the tools they intend to use and the tasks for which they will be employed. A general disclo - sure obligation would be unworkable, because AI is now embedded in legal research databases, transla - tion software and word processors. Disclosing every instance would be both impossible and meaningless. Subsequent developments confirm this direction. The ICC has established a dedicated Task Force on AI in dispute resolution, while the revised ICC Arbitration Rules 2026, in force since 1 June 2026, contain no express provision on AI at all. The ICC pursued effi - ciency by other means, including early determination of manifestly unmeritorious claims and a highly expe - dited procedure producing a final award within three months. In the ICC’s assessment, the regulation of AI belongs in guidance and procedural orders rather than in the rules themselves. What the Québec court actually decided The underlying dispute was unremarkable. A clinic claimed some CAD1.2 million from a public health - care institution, and the sole arbitrator dismissed the claim for a missed contractual notice deadline. What was remarkable was what the claimant discovered on review: every decision and every piece of literature cited in the reasoning was entirely convincing in form; and entirely non-existent. The court set the award aside. Its reasoning rests on two pillars that translate readily elsewhere: par - ty autonomy in the selection of the decision-maker, whose mandate may be exercised only by a natu - ral person; and the duty of independent adjudica - tion, since an award founded entirely on non-existent
authorities indicates that the tribunal never performed the analysis it was appointed to perform. Notably, the court did not prohibit the use of AI. It accepted that assistance with research, the structur - ing of argument and the drafting of text is legitimate. The line it drew runs between assistance and substitu - tion: AI may assist, but it must not decide. That is pre - cisely what the institutions had written a year earlier. The distinction is easy to articulate and difficult to police: ARIHQ was straightforward because the hal - lucinations were flagrant. The demanding cases will be those in which an arbitrator has leant heavily on a machine, the output happens to be plausible and nothing on the face of the award reveals it. The position under Slovenian Law Slovenia is a UNCITRAL Model Law jurisdiction. The Arbitration Act ( Zakon o arbitraži – ZArbit) of 2008 fol - lows the Model Law closely, and under Article 9 the competent court in Slovenia has exclusive jurisdiction over applications to set aside an award. The grounds for setting aside are exhaustively enu - merated in Article 40 ZArbit and mirror Article 34 of the Model Law and Article V of the New York Conven - tion. The right to bring such an application cannot be waived in advance. Three of those grounds are the ones on which an AI-related challenge could realisti - cally be built. • Inability to present one’s case: Where a tribu - nal decides on the basis of material no party advanced, such as undisclosed model-generated authorities, the unsuccessful party has a respect - able argument that it was never heard on the rea - soning that determined the dispute. This engages the equal-treatment guarantee that Article 18 of the Model Law places at the centre of arbitral proce - dure. • Irregular constitution of the tribunal or irregular procedure: If the practical effect of AI use is that the person the parties appointed did not decide the dispute, the tribunal was not constituted in accordance with the parties’ agreement. This is, in substance, the ground on which the Québec court relied, rendered into Model Law language.
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