Legal Personality for AI Systems and Robots from a Belgian Civil (Extra-Contractual) Liability Perspective
Victor Schollaert, Jan De Bruyne · 2025
Research shows that applying existing tort liability regimes to AI systems is not that obvious and entails several legal challenges. An idea that is often proposed to resolve these issues is the establishment of legal personality for AI systems. This study will focus on the reasons why legal personality may indeed be considered as a viable approach and especially assess some of the remaining legal challenges and modalities. Most of the existing literature seems to either reject or (partly) accept the idea of legal personality for AI systems without always addressing the legal and technical modalities more in detail. By addressing these issues (e.g. which legal rights and responsibilities, how to ensure an appropriate fund, who should contribute, etc.), this study will take a legal – not an ethical – view on how this tool may help achieving extra-legal policy goals.