Civil liability and artificial intelligence: challenges, policy options and legal responses

Teresa Rodríguez de las Heras Ballell

Chapter Chapter 22 in Research Handbook on the Law of Artificial Intelligence, 2025, pp 467-488 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: The applications of AI are numerous, incredibly diverse, and cross-sector. The benefits associated with the use of AI and expected from their systematic and extensive application are multiple, extremely promising, and to a certain extent overwhelmingly positive. Nevertheless, the expansive and growing use of AI in our society can also be a source of new risks, lead to undesired outcomes, lead to unintended consequences, or raise legal concerns and social challenges of many different kinds. In the face of such potentially negative effects, the fundamental question is whether traditional legal regimes are equipped to manage the risks and effectively resolve the conflicts arising from these situations in complex technological environments. The adequacy and completeness of civil liability regimes in the face of technological challenges have an extraordinary societal relevance. Should the liability system reveal insufficiencies, flaws and gaps in dealing with damages caused by AI, in particular, victims can remain uncompensated or, at least, only partly compensated. The social impact of a potential inadequacy of existing legal regimes to address new risks created by AI might then compromise the expected benefits. This chapter discusses first the inadequacies detected in the existing civil liability regimes in the face of AI to explore the different policy options to consider with the aim of accommodating the liability system to scenarios of damages caused by, or with the intervention of, AI systems. Subsequently, the chapter analyses in more depth the European Union’s response to the AI liability challenges with the adoption of two legislative proposals to accommodate product liability rules as well as some civil liability ones regarding damages caused by, or with the intervention of, AI systems.

Keywords: AI Act; Burden of proof; Civil liability; Damage; Product liability; Artificial intelligence (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
ISBN: 9781035316489
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