AI chatbots are all the rage. From ChatGPT to Bing's new AI-powered search engine and Google's new Bard chatbot, people are obsessed with seeing how they can replace tasks with AI and test its limits. Much of researchers' and journalists' concerns about the new AI wave have focused on bots' potential to generate bad answers and misinformation -- and its potential to displace human workers. But David Gunkel, a professor of communication studies at Northern Illinois University, is wrestling with a different question: What rights should robots, including AI chatbots, have? The question has taken on new urgency since the New York Times published an interview with Bing's AI, Sydney, in which the AI said it loved the reporter, and the Washington Post interviewed Sydney without mentioning that the reporter was a reporter.

HitchBot, a friendly-looking talking robot with a bucket for a body and pool-noodle limbs, first arrived on American soil back in 2015. This "hitchhiking" robot was an experiment by a pair of Canadian researchers who wanted to investigate people's trust in, and attitude towards, technology. The researchers wanted to see "whether a robot could hitchhike across the country, relying only on the goodwill and help of strangers." With rudimentary computer vision and a limited vocabulary but no independent means of locomotion, HitchBot was fully dependent on the participation of willing passers-by to get from place to place. Fresh off its successful journey across Canada, where it also picked up a fervent social media following, HitchBot was dropped off in Massachusetts and struck out towards California. But HitchBot never made it to the Golden State.

This article considers the law's response to the emergence of robots and artificial intelligence (AI), and whether they should be considered as legal persons and accordingly the bearers of legal rights. We analyse the regulatory issues raised by robot rights through three questions: (i) could robots be granted rights? On the question of whether we can recognise robot rights we examine how the law has treated different categories of legal persons and non-persons historically, finding that the concept of legal personhood is fluid and so arguably could be extended to include robots. However, as can be seen from the current debate in Intellectual Property (IP) law, AI and robots have not been recognised as the bearers of IP rights despite their ability to create and innovate, suggesting that the answer to the question of whether we will grant rights to robots is less certain. Finally, whether we should recognise rights for robots will depend on the intended purpose of regulatory reform.

Several years ago, in an effort to initiate dialogue about the moral and legal status of technological artifacts, I posted a photograph of myself holding a sign that read "Robot Rights Now" on Twitter. Responses to the image were, as one might imagine, polarizing, with advocates and critics lining up on opposite sides of the issue. What I didn't fully appreciate at the time is just how divisive an issue it is. For many researchers and developers slaving away at real-world applications and problems, the very notion of "robot rights" produces something of an allergic reaction. Over a decade ago, roboticist Noel Sharkey famously called the very idea "a bit of a fairy tale."

It is predicted that, by 2025, robots and machines driven by artificial intelligence (AI) will perform half of all productive functions in the workplace – companies already use robots across many industries, but the sheer scale is likely to prompt some new moral and legal questions. Machines currently have no protected legal rights but, as they become more intelligent and act more like humans, will the legal standards at play need to change? To answer this question, we need to take a good hard look at the nature of robotics and our own system of ethics, tackling a situation unlike anything the human race has ever known. The state of robotics at the moment is so comparatively underdeveloped that most of these questions will just be hypotheticals that will be nearly impossible to answer. Can, and should, robots be compensated for their work, and could they be represented by unions (and, if so, could a human union truly stand up for robot working rights, or would there always be an inherent tension)?

The most interesting character in Solo is a robot. L3-37, voiced by Phoebe Waller-Bridge (Fleabag), is a free-thinking, loud-mouthed Droid who introduces an entirely new concept into the Star Wars universe: robot rights. From the beginning, Droids like R2-D2 and C-3PO were presented as beings with thoughts and personalities of their own. But they also served masters and faced blatant anti-Droid sentiment, like the barkeep who refused to serve their kind in Episode IV. And they were forced to obey humans through restraining bolts, which limited their cognitive functions.

Despite how human-like they may act and appear, giving rights to robots may not be the best move. That was the consensus of 150 experts who weighed in on the discussion on Thursday, in light of the European Parliament's recent question of whether or not robots need special rights. A team of 150 experts in robotics, artificial intelligence, law, medical science and ethics wrote an open letter to the European Union advising that robots not be given special legal status as "electric persons," CNN reported. The letter says that giving robots human rights would be unhelpful. "From an ethical and legal perspective, creating a legal personality for a robot is inappropriate whatever the legal status model," the letter states.

Ethics and safety research in artificial intelligence is increasingly framed in terms of "alignment" with human values and interests. I argue that Turing's call for "fair play for machines" is an early and often overlooked contribution to the alignment literature. Turing's appeal to fair play suggests a need to correct human behavior to accommodate our machines, a surprising inversion of how value alignment is treated today. Reflections on "fair play" motivate a novel interpretation of Turing's notorious "imitation game" as a condition not of intelligence but instead of value alignment: a machine demonstrates a minimal degree of alignment (with the norms of conversation, for instance) when it can go undetected when interrogated by a human. I carefully distinguish this interpretation from the Moral Turing Test, which is not motivated by a principle of fair play, but instead depends on imitation of human moral behavior. Finally, I consider how the framework of fair play can be used to situate the debate over robot rights within the alignment literature. I argue that extending rights to service robots operating in public spaces is "fair" in precisely the sense that it encourages an alignment of interests between humans and machines.

Sophia the robot has been on a roll lately. Earlier in the year, its creator David Hanson told Jimmy Fallon that the bot is "basically alive." At the beginning of October, it showed up at the United Nations, announcing to delegates: "I am here to help humanity create the future." And just last week, Sophia was awarded an honorary citizenship by Saudi Arabia. "Sophia the robot becomes first humanoid Saudi citizen."

Tokyo, Japan may have just become the first city to officially grant residence to an artificial intelligence (AI). The intelligence's name is Shibuya Mirai and exists only as a chatbot on the popular Line messaging app. Mirai, which translates to'future' from Japanese, joins Hanson Robotic's "Sophia" as pioneering AI gaining statuses previously reserved for living, biological entities. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia granted Sophia citizenship last month. The Shibuya Ward of Tokyo released a statement through Microsoft saying, "His hobbies are taking pictures and observing people. And he loves talking with people… Please talk to him about anything."