Mediation: The Go-To for AI Legal Disputes

By: Lisa Romeo, Vice President, AAA-ICDR Commercial Division

As artificial intelligence (AI) continues its rapid integration into all aspects of our personal and professional lives, novel legal issues are emerging around AI systems. Challenges include questions of liability and negligence to concerns over data privacy, intellectual property, and compliance with evolving—and occasionally inconsistent—AI regulations. When disputes arise, the traditional court litigation process may not be the best path forward. 

Mediation offers a preferable alternative for resolving AI-related legal conflicts for several key reasons:

The Highly Technical Nature of AI Disputes

Legal battles over AI will potentially involve highly technical concepts and details around the data, algorithms, and inner workings of AI systems. Judges and juries likely lack the specialized expertise in these complexities. In mediation, the parties can mutually select a neutral mediator who has subject matter knowledge and previous experience with AI to evaluate the nuances of the case properly.

Lack of Precedent and Established Case Law

Because AI is an emerging field, there is little precedent for how courts will rule on many AI-related legal issues. Utilizing mediation allows the parties to have more control over the process and outcome instead of rolling the dice with a judge’s decision or a jury’s verdict that could set an unfavorable precedent. Through mediation, the parties can craft a voluntary, agreed-upon resolution that makes sense for their specific situation.

Need for Quick Resolution to Keep Pace with Technology
  
The rapid pace of AI development indicates that by the time a dispute works its way through years of litigation, the technology at issue may already be obsolete. What’s more, the companies involved may not have the resources to survive during a pending litigation. Mediation provides an expedited pathway to resolve conflicts promptly before the underlying technology is rendered irrelevant by the next AI advancement.

Disputes in Artificial Intelligence

To date, much of the reported AI-related litigation has revolved around issues of intellectual property, where owners of copyrights have filed lawsuits against the large language model generative AI or image generators, alleging that the owners’ content was used to train the models without permission or compensation.

Numerous lawsuits have been filed against these same companies under consumer and privacy protection laws as well, alleging breaches resulting from “scraping” the internet to train the AI tools. 

As more and more companies infuse AI into their daily work, we may see claims against these same companies for damages relating to “hallucinations,” or incorrect summarizations of data and/or text by the AI tools.  Indisputably, there will be claims that we simply cannot anticipate at this time.

Some AI conflicts may require escalation to traditional litigation or arbitration if the parties cannot find a solution through mediation. However, in many cases, mediation will be the preferred first option for its expertise, flexibility, and efficiency advantages when navigating the uncharted legal terrain around artificial intelligence. The door to court should not be the automatic first response for legal disputes in a field—AI—still being defined.

Lisa Romeo

Lisa Romeo is Vice President at the American Arbitration Association’s Boston Regional Office responsible for business development, education and arbitrator recruitment for Commercial disputes in New England. She also serves as national co-lead for the Technology Sector. She manages of large, complex commercial arbitrations in Massachusetts and New York. Employed… MORE