Year: 2023
The Online Safety Act 2023: a primer
After a long time in the making, the Online Safety Act finally received Royal Assent on 26 October 2023. According to the accompanying Government press release, the Act “places legal responsibility on tech companies to prevent and rapidly remove illegal content” and aims “to stop children seeing material that is harmful to them”. So what […]
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Artificial Intelligence Contractual Clauses from SCL
The SCL AI Group have released their Artificial Intelligence Contractual Clauses document which is free to access and share under a Creative Commons Licence. The development and use of AI will increase significantly over the next few years. AI systems will therefore increasingly become the subject matter of transactional contracts. AI technologies create new and unique risks which will […]
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Towards a new benchmark of digital open justice
As reported here, in April 2022 The National Archives launched its Find Case Law service, and 6 months on John Sheridan of TNA described the progress that had been made. Meanwhile, ICLR systematically monitored the publication of listed cases by TNA over its first 12 months of operation. The resulting report, Publication of listed judgments: […]
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Generative AI and access to justice
It’s been almost a year since ChatGPT was released to the public back in November 2022. Although much has been written about the impact of generative AI on the legal sector as a whole, there has been less focus on its potential to improve access to justice for the ordinary citizen who cannot afford a […]
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New developments at vLex
In April 2023, legal tech disruptors vLex and Fastcase merged to form the world’s largest global law library, in what has been described as one of the most consequential mergers in the history of legal tech. The teams have now fully integrated, and over one billion legal documents are accessible on vLex’s AI-powered legal research […]
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Global AI regulation
In the wake of an avalanche of publicity following the hugely successful roll-out of ChatGPT, governments around the world have been waking up to the transformative effects of generative AI tools upon their societies, economies and legal systems. Stark warnings from leading industry figures such as Sam Altman, Elon Musk and Geoffrey Hinton, about the […]
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ChatGPT: more questions
Following his recent article on ChatGPT’s implications for the legal world, Alex Heshmaty garners answers to further questions from Dr Ilia Kolochenko. Who owns the copyright of ChatGPT responses? This now-rapidly evolving question is largely unsettled among jurisdictions, in most cases probably no-one. Is it possible for original copyright holders to prevent ChatGPT (or Bard) […]
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A pro-innovation approach to AI regulation
The Government recently published a White Paper, “A pro-innovation approach to AI regulation,” setting out its proposals for AI regulation, in conjunction with an impact assessment and consultation paper. Jo Frears, IP & Technology Leader at Lionshead Law, considers some of the key points. The meaning of “AI” The White Paper acknowledges that there is […]
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Harnessing innovative technologies to meet future challenges
A new joint report entitled A New National Purpose, which explores how the UK can harness innovative technologies to meet future challenges, has recently been published by Tony Blair and William Hague. The “cross-party” report argues that we are currently undergoing a new form of Industrial Revolution “as developments in artificial intelligence (AI), biotech, climate […]
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Make more of the voice of your clients
The voice of your clients – and others you deal with – has potential to play much more of a leading role in the ongoing development and evolution of law firms. How to harness the voice of the client An “agile” business – as more and more firms recognise the benefits of being one – […]
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ChatGPT: implications for the legal world
Chatbots have been around since the 1960s and coders have been trying to pass the Turing test ever since, creating increasingly sophisticated iterations of natural language processing (NLP) software. A recent episode, where a Google engineer was sacked for claiming that the search engine’s chatbot generator software known as LaMDA was sentient, perhaps demonstrates the […]
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