Regulating the future: A look at the EU's plan to reboot product liability rules for AI

A recently presented European Union plan to update long-standing product liability rules for the digital age -- including addressing rising use of artificial intelligence (AI) and automation -- took some instant flak from European consumer organization, BEUC, which framed the update as something of a downgrade by arguing EU consumers will be left less well protected from harms caused by AI services than other types of products. For a flavor of the sorts of AI-driven harms and risks that may be fuelling demands for robust liability protections, only last month the UK's data protection watchdog issued a blanket warning over pseudoscientific AI systems that claim to perform'emotional analysis' -- urging such tech should not be used for anything other than pure entertainment. While on the public sector side, back in 2020, a Dutch court found an algorithmic welfare risk assessment for social security claimants breached human rights law. And, in recent years, the UN has also warned over the human rights risks of automating public service delivery. Additionally, US courts' use of blackbox AI systems to make sentencing decisions -- opaquely baking in bias and discrimination -- has been a tech-enabled crime against humanity for years. BEUC, an umbrella consumer group which represents 46 independent consumer organisations from 32 countries, had been calling for years for an update to EU liability laws to take account of growing applications of AI and ensure consumer protections laws are not being outpaced.