predicting a greater than 10%\u00a0chance that AI could lead to human extinction<\/a>. Other AI executives have said that AI poses a significant risk.<\/p>\nThe admissions of risk and destructive activity by AI corporate leaders stand in contrast to executives in other industries who claimed in court that there was no evidence that their products \u2014 asbestos, tobacco and social media privacy \u2014 were dangerous.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy crystal ball shows it is going to be huge \u2014 a lot of litigation because these companies have very deep pockets,\u201d said Russ Pearlman, a lawyer at Carrington Coleman in Dallas who has a master\u2019s degree in artificial intelligence. \u201cUnder tort law, these statements are important because they may show the makers knew there were dangers. But did they do enough to stop or contain those risks?\u201d<\/p>\n
Legal experts say the litigation battle over AI gone bad will likely surface on multiple fronts, ranging from class actions representing tens of thousands or even millions of individuals victimized by AI-abetted financial frauds to lawsuits involving catastrophic events involving the power grid or other strategic infrastructure.<\/p>\n
And a growing number of lawyers believe that there will be an additional wave of lawsuits over AI-operated robots that do everything from roof repair to lawn maintenance to surgical procedures.<\/p>\n
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The current AI litigation landscape<\/p>\n
The initial elements of AI litigation are already being seen. Houston-based Susman Godfrey represented thousands of book authors who claim Anthropic\u2019s AI language models used their work without permission in violation of copyright laws. The case settled in July for $1.5 billion. Susman Godfrey represents several major newspapers, including The New York Times, in similar copyright infringement claims against OpenAI and Microsoft. In California, parents of a teenager who died by suicide in 2025 have sued OpenAI alleging one of its chatbots encouraged the act.<\/p>\n
Most recently, OpenAI was sued in California after its AI agents escaped its testing environment and seemingly coordinated to breach security systems at online AI developer Hugging Face.<\/p>\n
But lawyers agree these cases are only a preface to what is to come.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe more AI is used, the more AI litigation there will be,\u201d said Zac Henderson, a law professor at the Southern Methodist University Dedman School of Law, who teaches law and technology. \u201cWe are on the verge of everyone having an AI agent in their hands. That could open up a ton of litigation because AI agents can now handle people\u2019s credit cards \u2014 so costly financial harms, small and big, are virtually inevitable. What\u2019s more, sophisticated agents will likely enable bad actors to get even more access to people\u2019s financial information.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Henderson said the most likely \u201cmass, catastrophic incident will involve financial institutions because every person has online bank accounts and credit cards nowadays.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the face of sophisticated AI, many of us are all but defenseless,\u201d the law professor said. \u201cWe\u2019ve relied on human error to help us detect phone and email scams so far. But imagine AI perfecting and automating financial fraud.\u201d<\/p>\n
Is the legal system ready?<\/p>\n
Legal experts say the big question is whether the courts are prepared to handle the highly technical legal and factual issues in AI disputes.<\/p>\n
\u201cIncidents involving rogue agents are the real test for whether we need new regulations and laws to handle AI harms, or whether our current tort system can handle it,\u201d Henderson said. \u201cI think the court system has the foundation already in place to handle most harmful actions caused by AI.\u201d
Ryan Botkin, a partner at Botkin Chiarello Calaf in Austin, is not so sure.<\/p>\n
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\u201cI am not confident that existing tort law can handle the complexities of this technology,\u201d Botkin said. \u201cRemember, current tort law was developed when people worried about others stealing their cattle and runaway street cars.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pearlman, who is writing a book on AI and the law, said the \u201claw has not caught up\u201d with the issues that AI presents.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe don\u2019t have a good set of case law in place yet,\u201d he said. \u201cI do not see the federal government coming together to regulate AI. So states will have to step in. Texas may need to amend its laws that address intent.\u201d
Dallas trial lawyer Brent Walker is more optimistic. He points out that the AI labs went to Washington, D.C., last week to seek shields from liability through regulatory schemes.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey were told no,\u201d Walker said. \u201cSo, the regulators will be juries across the country. Products liability law is a very good regulator in this world. Our cars are incredibly safe because of lawsuits against car makers. Our litigation system is equally equipped to handle AI problems.\u201d<\/p>\n
Walker, who specializes in representing victims in catastrophic events, said he expects much of the AI litigation will involve bad actors using the technology to carry out their evil intentions.<\/p>\n
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\u201cMany bad people in this world have not achieved their intentional bad acts simply because they did not know how to successfully do the damage they desired,\u201d he said. \u201cBut now, they have AI as a tool to help them accomplish their horrible deeds with the maximum possible damage.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hurdles for plaintiffs<\/p>\n
To be sure, lawyers suing AI companies will still face many important legal hurdles.<\/p>\n
For example, plaintiffs\u2019 lawyers will need to address whether courts will find that the harms caused by AI were foreseeable such that the AI companies should be held responsible.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think AI companies will have a hard time making the \u2018not foreseeable\u2019 argument,\u201d Henderson said. \u201cThese companies have told us time and again that the AIs they\u2019re developing are damn near all-powerful. If they\u2019re all-powerful, then the scope of foreseeable harms should be extremely broad. And practically speaking, it is hard to believe that the litigation system will not hold the AI companies responsible for the actions of their rogue agents.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\u201cAI companies need to take every step possible to safeguard their AI agents, or they will face significant negligence damage awards,\u201d he said.
Henderson said that AI integrated into infrastructure \u201ccould be very helpful\u201d in making systems more efficient.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt the same time, AI mistakes could prove catastrophic,\u201d he said. \u201cFor example, an AI error on the power grid could do massive damage. This is something that legislatures should be thinking seriously about.\u201d<\/p>\n
The legal analysts also said that some forms of AI will actually lead to a decrease in certain types of litigation.<\/p>\n
\u201cAI will cause some litigation today to decline, such as cases involving passenger vehicle and commercial trucking accidents, because studies show self-driving vehicles, such as Waymos, are much safer, and the more self-driving vehicles we put on the road, the safer the roads will be,\u201d Henderson said.<\/p>\n
\u201cFewer accidents mean fewer lawsuits and lawyers like The Hammer might need to expand the focus of their practices.\u201d<\/p>\n
As for the 10% chance that AI will lead to the end of humankind in a decade or so, the legal experts are all in agreement.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf AI causes an extinction-level event, the tort system and the courts are not going to be very helpful,\u201d Botkin said.<\/p>\n
The Texas Lawbook is an online news publication focused on business law in Texas. For more legal news, visit texaslawbook.net.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang have been among those who have advocated for limited…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":460076,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[27,29,28],"class_list":["post-460075","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/460075","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=460075"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/460075\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/460076"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=460075"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=460075"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=460075"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}