AI warfare and human rights: accountability and global implications in armed conflicts

Abstract

This paper examines the accelerating integration of artificial intelligence (AI) systems into contemporary warfare and its implications for international humanitarian law (IHL), human rights, and corporate accountability. The analysis traces how AI systems have rapidly shifted from experimental tools to central components of global military operations, developing from tools of surveillance into tools of autonomous killing. Despite their growing influence, military applications of AI remain exempt from major regulatory frameworks, one of them being the European Union Artificial Intelligence Act, creating a legal vacuum in which States and private companies develop and deploy high-risk systems without binding oversight. By taking a regional approach, drawing on case studies from Europe, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, South Asia and Africa, the paper highlights the increasing privatisation of warfare, where technology corporations, including Google, Microsoft, Palantir, Huawei, and regional actors, including the US, Russia, China, Israel, supply data infrastructure, targeting software, and autonomous capabilities that blur traditional boundaries of responsibility. The Ukrainian conflict demonstrates how AI-driven drones, decision-support software, and public–private collaboration has transformed battlefield logistics and targeting while eroding meaningful human control. In Gaza, Israeli systems such as Lavender, the Gospel, and Where’s Daddy? illustrate how algorithmic target generation, often with minimal human verification, raises acute concerns regarding distinction, proportionality, and precaution under IHL. Meanwhile, conflicts in Myanmar and across Southeast Asia, and South Asia show how AI-enabled surveillance and weapons proliferate through opaque defence partnerships involving China, Turkey, and Russia. Across these contexts, the paper argues that AI systems magnify existing accountability gaps by distributing decision-making across programmers, corporations, and military actors, making attribution for unlawful harm increasingly difficult. The study concludes that without robust regulation addressing both State and corporate obligations, AI-driven warfare risks normalising systemic violations of human rights and accelerating the erosion of established norms governing the use of force.