If your company uses AI to produce content, make decisions, or influence the lives of others, it’s likely you will be liable for whatever it does—especially when it makes a mistake. This also applies to big tech companies rolling out chat-based AIs to the public, including Google and Microsoft, as well as well-funded startups like Anthropic and OpenAI. “If in the coming years we wind up using AI the way most commentators expect, by leaning on it to outsource a lot of our content and judgment calls, I don’t think companies will be able to escape some form of liability,” says Jane Bambauer, a law professor at the University of Florida who has written about these issues. The implications of this are momentous. Every company that uses generative AI could be responsible under laws that govern liability for harmful speech, and laws governing liability for defective products—since today’s AIs are both creators of speech and products. Some legal experts say this may create a flood of lawsuits for companies of all sizes. It is already clear that the consequences of artificial intelligence output may go well beyond a threat to companies’ reputations. Concerns about future liability also help explain why companies are manipulating their systems behind the scenes to avoid problematic outputs—for example, when Google’s Gemini came across as too “woke.” It also may be a driver of the industry’s efforts to reduce “hallucinations,” the term for when generative AIs make stuff up. The legal logic is straightforward. Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 has long protected internet platforms from being held liable for the things we say on them. (In short, if you say something defamatory about your neighbor on Facebook, they can sue you, but not Meta.) This law was foundational to the development of the early internet and is, arguably, one reason that many of today’s biggest tech companies grew in the U.S., and not elsewhere.
Full commentary : The artificial intelligence companies are walking on a path of legal thorns.
