Report of the 1st Workshop on Generative AI and Law
A. Feder Cooper, Katherine Lee, James Grimmelmann, Daphne Ippolito, Christopher Callison-Burch, Christopher A. Choquette-Choo, Niloofar Mireshghallah, Miles Brundage, David Mimno, Madiha Zahrah Choksi, Jack M. Balkin, Nicholas Carlini, Christopher De Sa, Jonathan Frankle, Deep Ganguli, Bryant Gipson, Andres Guadamuz, Swee Leng Harris, Abigail Z. Jacobs, Elizabeth Joh, Gautam Kamath, Mark Lemley, Cass Matthews, Christine McLeavey, Corynne McSherry, Milad Nasr, Paul Ohm, Adam Roberts, Tom Rubin, Pamela Samuelson, Ludwig Schubert, Kristen Vaccaro, Luis Villa, Felix Wu, Elana Zeide
TL;DR
The GenLaw report synthesizes takeaways from the inaugural GenLaw workshop, which gathered ML and law experts to explore the legal challenges posed by Generative AI, with a focus on IP and privacy within U.S. law. It argues for a shared knowledge base, a clear taxonomy of legal issues, and a concrete research agenda to foster collaboration across disciplines. The document emphasizes that copyright concerns are only a starting point and envisions a long-term program addressing governance, standards, and international considerations, supported by ongoing resources, education, and public engagement. Overall, the work highlights the central role of technical design choices in legal analysis and aims to guide researchers, policymakers, and industry in navigating the evolving intersection of law and generative technology.
Abstract
This report presents the takeaways of the inaugural Workshop on Generative AI and Law (GenLaw), held in July 2023. A cross-disciplinary group of practitioners and scholars from computer science and law convened to discuss the technical, doctrinal, and policy challenges presented by law for Generative AI, and by Generative AI for law, with an emphasis on U.S. law in particular. We begin the report with a high-level statement about why Generative AI is both immensely significant and immensely challenging for law. To meet these challenges, we conclude that there is an essential need for 1) a shared knowledge base that provides a common conceptual language for experts across disciplines; 2) clarification of the distinctive technical capabilities of generative-AI systems, as compared and contrasted to other computer and AI systems; 3) a logical taxonomy of the legal issues these systems raise; and, 4) a concrete research agenda to promote collaboration and knowledge-sharing on emerging issues at the intersection of Generative AI and law. In this report, we synthesize the key takeaways from the GenLaw workshop that begin to address these needs. All of the listed authors contributed to the workshop upon which this report is based, but they and their organizations do not necessarily endorse all of the specific claims in this report.