Coalition warns AI warfare undermines humanitarian law

More than 200 civil society groups and advocates on Monday called for an immediate halt to the use of artificial intelligence systems in military “kill chains.” They warned that AI-accelerated warfare risks facilitating violations of international criminal, human rights and humanitarian law.

The joint statement warns that AI systems embedded in kill chains are accelerating the speed and scale of military assaults in ways that undermine foundational principles of humanitarian law, including distinction, proportionality and precaution. The signatories said that claimed safeguards such as “human in the loop” mechanisms cannot prevent the lethal consequences of AI-accelerated targeting. These safeguards instead risk becoming a means of “rubber-stamping” killing at greatly accelerated speed and scale.

The coalition pointed to US strikes on Iran earlier this year as an example. It noted that AI tools for target generation enabled strikes on nearly 2,000 targets within the first 48 hours of the campaign. In Gaza, Israel deployed AI targeting tools including Lavender, Gospel and Where’s Daddy. The statement said these tools may “contribute to the obfuscation of international crimes behind a veneer of perceived algorithmic objectivity.”

It also mentioned an open letter signed by more than 560 Google employees in April urging the company to refuse classified military AI use. The signatories urged tech companies to refrain from contracts with agencies that commit violations of international law and to halt AI decision-support systems for targeting.

They called on states to end AI use in military targeting and to provide transparency on how it is currently being deployed in combat. The statement noted that Amnesty International wrote to both OpenAI and Anthropic on their human rights policies regarding generative AI in military contexts. Only OpenAI had responded at the time of publication.

Critics of the coalition’s position argue that AI tools can reduce civilian casualties by improving targeting accuracy. The signatories counter that the speed of AI-driven warfare makes meaningful human oversight impossible. The statement warns that without a halt, the technology risks normalizing automated killing at a scale that existing legal frameworks were not designed to handle.