AI is reshaping society with its immense capabilities and brings along complex legal challenges around privacy, accountability, and intellectual property, among others. Lawyers and lawmakers are grappling with issues like data misuse, liability for AI-caused harm, and protecting individuals from political misinformation that could be brought about by deep-fakes. While 2024 saw steps toward transparency and the adoption of legislations world-wide, there's still a long way to go to balance AI innovation with safeguarding rights and fairness. What will 2025 bring?
This blog by WAI Silvia A. Carretta and Dina Blikshteyn ponders what the new year will bring to the field of AI law.
In our technology-dependent society, AI continues to enhance computing power, improve machine learning algorithms, and provide massive amounts of data to the masses—essentially transforming everyday life. At the same time, the rise of AI also presents challenges and concerns regarding human autonomy, data protection, and potential violations of fundamental rights and freedoms. Below are a few areas of concern that have left AI lawyers grappling with new laws, lack of laws, or a legal framework that is often outdated to tackle AI:
Data Privacy and Transparency: AI relies on vast amounts of data, raising concerns about the potential appropriation and misuse of personal information and the abuse of data collection methods by technology giants, vendors, and the like. The lack of transparency in AI's reasoning processes exacerbates these concerns. The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) protect individuals' rights to object to automated decision-making and seek human intervention. However, the opacity of machine learning (ML) systems can reduce accountability and contestability, threatening individual dignity and fundamental rights. Addressing these issues requires ensuring transparency and preventing false positives, unfair, or discriminatory results. In 2024, many AI vendors and designers took steps to address these concerns by indicating the sources that the AI used to arrive at an answer.
Liability and Accountability: AI's ability to operate autonomously may cause harm to individuals or property. Determining liability in cases where driverless cars cause accidents, AI provides incorrect medical diagnoses, or incorrectly instructs a robot during surgery is complex. Liability could be addressed through civil law doctrines like negligence or strict liability, but advanced AI may exhibit unforeseeable behaviors. Product safety and liability legislation can help identify responsible parties, but challenges remain in defining AI as products rather than services. Insurance coverage may also help, provided the coverage does not exclude or accounts for AI. Redefining standards of care and liability doctrines, as well as insurance in the AI context, will be seen in the near future.
Legal Accountability and Contractual Remedies: The legal accountability of AI is challenging due to its novel and unpredictable outcomes. The black-box problem and opacity in AI's reasoning may require specific contractual remedies for unwanted outcomes. Relying on private parties to decide responsibility and indemnity could create an 'accountability gap,' making it difficult and expensive for harmed third parties to trace damage back to AI decisions. In 2024, there have been inroads in legislation in the U.S. and EU directed at protecting consumers from those who develop and use AI. In addition to legislation, creative contract drafting is needed to anticipate AI's potential negative consequences.
Intellectual Property: AI's ability to create music, art, various inventions challenges existing patent and copyright laws. To date, South Africa is the only country where AI can be an inventor. The rest of the world, at least for now, uniformly decided that the inventor must be a natural person. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office is pushing the idea that AI is just another tool in a toolbox that inventors can use. This view, however, is yet to be challenged in courts. Today, questions arise about ownership, liability, and the extent to which AI-generated inventions are to be considered prior art. In the U.S., 2024 saw a huge uptick in copyright litigation with more than 30 AI cases presently being litigated in multiple jurisdictions, leaving issues of authorship, ownership, fair use, and moral and economic rights still to be decided.
Political Misinformation and Deepfakes: 2024 saw a rise in AI-generated deepfakes aimed at promoting financial scams, making false statements by political figures, interfering with elections, and influencing voter behavior. During a democratic primary, a scandal erupted when a fake audio of President Biden urging voters to skip the primary emerged. Similarly, not-so-flattering deepfake images of Taylor Swift emerged in January 2024. Both instances spurred legislation at state and federal levels. As AI continues to develop, AI deepfakes are likely to play a significant role in global politics, contributing to misinformation and societal polarization. Ensuring AI remains compatible with democratic values requires developing governmental rules and accountability procedures, which in 2024 appeared to be catching up to deepfakes. Legislative efforts are already being made for watermarking AI generated images and video.
As AI develops, the legal challenges it presents are becoming more pronounced. Although countries worldwide are starting to address these issues, there is still work to do to put a framework in place that ensures legal certainty, transparency, and accountability for both positive and negative outcomes of AI.
At WAI we are looking forward to see what 2025 will bring. We will continue sharing with our WAI community updates, news and opportunities and to discuss howAI continues to impact and challenge our legal frameworks.
Happy holidays from WAI Global Legal Team!
Thank you for taking the time to read our blog. This was the last post for 2024. We already have all blogs for 2025 lined up for you and they are gonna be full of AI news, discussions of legislative drafts and comments on developments in AI Regulations.
With this post we round up 2024 and wish all our WAI community happy holidays and a brilliant beginning of the new year!
Collaborate with us!
If you want to share legal news about AI that is relevant for our community world-wide, and if you work in the field of AI and law, reach out to Silvia A. Carretta, WAI Chief Legal Officer (via LinkedIn or via silvia@womeninai.co) or to Dina Blikshteyn (via dina@womeninai.co) for the opportunity to be featured in one of the next issues of this WAI Legal Insights Blog.
Silvia A. Carretta and Dina Blikshteyn
- Editors
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