AI Update: MIT's AI Rules, BigLaw's Slow AI Embrace, The NYSBA AI Task Force

An MIT task force created to "to develop principles and guidelines on ensuring factual accuracy, accurate sources, valid legal reasoning, alignment with professional ethics, due diligence, and responsible use of Generative AI for law and legal processes" has released an early version of seven principles for responsible AI use in a legal context, LegalTech News reports. Read more on the task force directly from MIT here.

Some Am Law 200 firms are taking it slow and steady when it comes to implementing AI, starting with email drafting while planning to one day incorporate AI into legal work. "We don't want to go from a flip phone to an iPhone 14," Kate Orr, global head of practice innovation at Orrick Herrington & Sutcliffe, tells The American Lawyer.

For Bloomberg Law, New York State Bar Association President Richard Lewis explains the organization's AI task force's goals for the future of AI in legal work. "Leveraging the power of AI could be a game-changer--a reality that cuts both ways," he writes. "Navigating this world will be challenging, but if we proceed responsibly and with our eyes wide open, we could change the legal profession for the better."

Congress is unlikely to pass new AI laws any time soon, Sen. Todd Young (R-IN) tells Politico, suggesting that federal agencies should first be better equipped to address AI-related problems using current laws. Young is a key member of a bipartisan group assembled by Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) to address threats posed by AI.

The legal battles determining what individuals can do when AI presents false information about them are beginning to heat up, according to the New York Times. "It is always frustrating when you realize that the law does not keep up with technology," Anne T. Donnelly, the district attorney of Nassau County, NY, tells the Times. "I don't like meeting victims and saying, 'We can't help you.'"

AI-related intellectual property battles are emerging across the pond as well, the BBC reports, with several British artists and illustrators filing a new suit against DeviantArt and Midjourney parent company Stability AI, adding to "a growing stack of lawsuits against AI firms, which are testing issues of copyright."

Ethan Beberness is a Brooklyn-based writer covering legal tech, small law firms, and in-house counsel for Above the Law. His coverage of legal happenings and the legal services industry has appeared in Law360, Bushwick Daily, and elsewhere.