Understanding the AI Legal Landscape
Estelle Wallingford · 2025
This chapter explores the emerging legal landscape as it relates to AI. The chapter evaluates regulatory and liability approaches to AI, beginning with regulatory responses. What emerges is that these regulatory measures do not fully address the legal uncertainties posed by AI and that there exists a need for a complementary liability response. The chapter then moves to evaluate proposed legal responses to AI, including liability responses. Responses are categorised based on their underlying approach to resolving legal uncertainties posed by AI into four categories: (1) a General Principles , where liability is governed by existing legal principles; (2) a Shared Liability , where liability is shared between parties connected to a deployed AI system; (3) an Imposed Liability , where liability standards are imposed on actors connected to AI; and (4) an Insurance Mandated Liability , where liability is resolved through mandating parties hold a relevant insurance policy. These categories enable an analysis of proposed legal responses to AI and importantly serve as the basis for developing an overarching framework for navigating different liability responses to AI later in the book. The underlying discussions in this chapter therefore form the basis for contextualising the Tri-Phase AI Liability Model in later chapters.