Key Legal Issues in Artificial Intelligence: An Overview

53 questions on key legal issues in artificial intelligence, answered and cited by the UpLaw editorial team.

• Can an AI be named as the inventor on a patent?
• Can I copyright something I made with AI?
• Could res ipsa loquitur help a plaintiff injured by an AI system?
• Does the EU AI Act apply to a U.S. company?
• How can a company explain a black-box model to satisfy transparency duties?
• How does an AI hiring tool end up discriminating?
• How does a U.S. company begin AI Act compliance?
• How does BIPA apply to a face-scan check-in kiosk?
• How does the EU AI Act regulate foundation models, and what are the penalties?
• How does the four-fifths rule work in practice?
• How does the Pannu test apply to AI-assisted inventions?
• How does Title VII reach algorithmic hiring?
• How do you draft an AI patent claim to survive Alice?
• How is the question of AI output ownership different from the training-data question?
• How much human editing of AI output is enough to claim copyright?
• How should indemnification be allocated in an AI agreement?
• Is my company liable if a hiring tool we bought from a vendor discriminates?
• Is passing the four-fifths rule a safe harbor?
• Is there a unifying theme across the different areas of AI law?
• What are the business consequences of the human-authorship rule?
• What are the EU AI Act's risk tiers?
• What are the main technologies grouped under "artificial intelligence," and why does the distinction matter legally?
• What data-rights and explainability terms belong in an AI agreement?
• What did the Copyright Office decide about Zarya of the Dawn?
• What did the Thaler copyright case decide?
• What documentation does an AI-assisted patent application require?
• What does ABA Formal Opinion 512 conclude about generative AI?
• What does BIPA require before collecting biometric data?
• What does the Copyright Office's AI registration guidance require?
• What do the decided cases show about liability for AI-caused harm?
• What enforcement activity has there been on AI hiring bias?
• What is a defensible workflow for AI-assisted legal work?
• What is the burden-shifting structure of a disparate-impact claim?
• What is the defensive playbook for an employer using an AI hiring tool?
• What privacy laws govern AI in the United States?
• What questions did Thaler v. Vidal leave open?
• What real BIPA settlements have there been?
• What rights do individuals have regarding automated decisions about them?
• What should a business do before deploying an AI system?
• What should counsel advise a client deploying an autonomous AI system?
• What state and local AI hiring statutes exist?
• What was the exposure in the Cothron per-scan accrual case?
• Where does the human-authorship requirement in copyright come from?
• Which Model Rules govern a lawyer's use of AI?
• Why do AI patents face a Section 101 eligibility problem?
• Why do AI warranties need special attention in a license agreement?
• Why does AI raise legal problems if the underlying doctrines are old?
• Why does products-liability law strain when applied to autonomous AI?
• Why do liability caps deserve special scrutiny in AI contracts?
• Why do workplace AI injury cases push liability up the supply chain?
• Why is BIPA the most litigated AI privacy statute?
• Why is the law's insistence on a human actually good news for compliance?
• Why were the lawyers in Mata v. Avianca sanctioned?