WOW…what a few weeks it has been in legaltech/AI land…if we had any thoughts that the pace of activity might slow in 2024, there has definitely been plenty of tech shows, launches, announcements and big leaps forward to put that to rest – here’s a few things that caught my eye:
Responsible AI…
I’ve been mulling over two interconnected things developing in parallel here:
- Regulation: We’ve seen standards and legislation start to roll out in lots of places – check out this great free interactive Global AI Regulation Tracker developed by Raymond Sun – “you can click on a country to see a quick summary of its AI regulatory approach and developments.” When you take a look at this Tracker, it’s clear that compliance will continue to be a priority for legal advisers in law firms (advising their clients) and inhouse counsel (advising their Board) - using tools like this is already a must and will become the new BAU to stay on track!
- Professional responsibility: There’s a special obligation placed on lawyers to get educated and use tech well (see below for how the definition of “well” is evolving!) not just for their clients but to contribute to its evolution. There’s been lots of activity on this front over the last week or two:
- Law society/bar association working groups/taskforces, etc. popping up around the world focusing on the impact of AI/generative AI in legal practice and consequent lawyer responsibilities. What’s being prioritised/discussed is different but seems to include a mix of mandating tech competency, education, guidance, and sanctions.
- The courts have been on the pointy end of lawyers using GenAI badly. An increasing number of courts in the US have issued practice directions (using that term broadly here) requiring that lawyers disclose the use of AI/generative AI in court documents and/or certify the outputs from it.
There’s no doubt the legal industry still needs lots of education…lots… and guidance about the use of this tech – two more cases of court filings with hallucinations leading to sanctions in the US this week – but, it’s worth pausing here to make sure that in seeking to provide help, an absence of collaboration and harmonisation does not have the opposite effect. There is a “train the trainers” imperative in all of this i.e., the people putting these guidelines/practice directions together MUST understand the tech (AI does not = genAI) AND must also accept these as living documents that will require constant review and updating as the tech continues to evolve. There’s a second opportunity and imperative too, not to “reinvent the wheel” one state/provincial/national bar association/law society or court at a time! This is the right time for local, national and global coordination on all things lawyer responsibility and AI - let’s hope all those working groups and taskforces noted earlier, make that a priority too!
The next gen, GenAI battle of the titans
Did you also feel that everything got bigger, faster, multilingual and multimodal this past week? Well, there’s a good reason for that!
The announcements of Open AI’s Sora and Google’s Gemini 1.5 exploded and reunited images and text to create a reimagined multimodal functionality like we have never seen before. And, “Cohere for AI, the nonprofit research lab established by Cohere in 2022, unveiled Aya, an open-source large language model (LLM) supporting 101 languages — more than twice the number of languages covered by existing open-source models.”
Great, so why is this important for legal? This is where those law firms/legal departments (and anyone, anywhere in the legal ecosystem) with Innovation Committees and/or visionary leaders are carving out the next generation of market differentiation for their firms, clients and organisations. Why? Because they too are looking at this tech and not waiting for someone to tell them why it matters!
I look at a product like Sora and my mind immediately goes to how law firms/legal departments could use it to convert text-based advice to e.g., video. It also wanders into the world of on-demand legal education and how it will be turned upside down. This tech is demanding that we think differently about ways of working, delivering legal services/products/solutions and, it’s creating new roles and opportunities along the way…well, for those open to it….that needs to be everyone BTW!
As budget time approaches in lots of places around the world, this might be a good time to pause and reflect on the Why – here’s a great cheat sheet published this week by Generative AI on How to Identify AI Opportunities to get you started!
When chatbots go rogue?
I can’t leave this post without mentioning the already infamous chatbot case that hit the headlines this last week - Moffat vs Air Canada – here a quick summary from Ars Technica:
“After months of resisting, Air Canada was forced to give a partial refund to a grieving passenger who was misled by an airline chatbot inaccurately explaining the airline’s bereavement travel policy.”
Do read the whole article – it’s a salient reminder that tech needs to be understood, tested and is not a set and forget…hmmm…have I said that already?
Executive Director