Both sides increasingly use artificial intelligence to analyze communications in domestic violence cases.

Pitfalls include low-context analysis, pattern hallucination, bias, the streetlight effect and data exposure.

While AI analysis is easy and profitable for some, it can distort domestic violence legal cases.

Patterns that are detectable in written texts are not the full scope of the abuse.

By Chitra Raghavan, Ph.D., and Lisa Aronson Fontes, Ph.D.

Both sides in contentious family court cases increasingly turn to artificial intelligence to analyze diaries and communications with former partners for evidence of abuse. Many then try to use these AI-generated analyses in court proceedings. But is it “expert evidence?”

As coercive control scholars, who also serve as expert witnesses in legal cases, we see potential pitfalls. (We'll save discussion of the advantages for another piece.)

We're concerned with the growing tendency to treat AI as an authoritative source for determining “what’s really happening" in domestic violence cases. In practice, this often involves uploading digital records—such as text messages, emails, or parenting app exchanges—to a large language model such as Claude or ChatGPT and asking it to identify abuse patterns or relationship dynamics.

AI analysis lacks context.

Domestic abusers use coercive control to dominate their victims. Tactics can include strategic love-like acts, intimidation, isolation, monitoring, and physical, verbal, sexual, financial, and litigation abuse. Over time, control often becomes subtle, with victims responding to cues shaped by shared history.

This variability makes coercive control difficult to detect without understanding the broader relationship context, power dynamics, and behavioral patterns. AI analyzes data with only the context that it is provided. AI cannot address gestures, tone of voice, facial expression, historical context, or impact.

An example text could be, “I’m picking up the kids at your house on Friday at 5 pm. Have them ready,........

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