Expert Witness Journal Issue 66 April 2026 - Flipbook - Page 78
AI & liability - does English law
need to change?
by Nick Payne & Nina O’Sullivan, Lawyers at Mishcon de Reya.
In brief
The UKJT Legal Statement
•
The UK Jurisdiction Taskforce (the UKJT) has
published a draft Legal Statement considering
the potential novel legal issues that harms
caused by AI may give rise to, and the extent to
which English law can address them.
•
The UKJT takes an optimistic view of the ability
of AI based harms to be addressed by existing
English law principles. However, it identi昀椀es a
number of conceptual and practical challenges.
In January 2026, the UKJT (an “industry-led
initiative, tasked with promoting the use of English
law and UK’s jurisdictions for technology and digital
innovation”) published a draft Legal Statement on
“Liability for AI Harms Under English Private Law”.
This Legal Statement forms the basis for a public
consultation on how English law can, and should,
impose liability for losses caused by the use of AI.
•
The Legal Statement seeks to reassure readers
that there is less uncertainty as to how AI harms
will be dealt with by the English courts than may
be thought. However, until the English courts
are able to grapple with these issues through
issuing judgments on particular cases, inevitably
there will be some signi昀椀cant question marks to
be considered when dealing with AI tools.
EXPERT WITNESS JOURNAL
The fundamental questions addressed by the Legal
Statement are:
76
•
Can an AI itself be liable for losses it causes as a
matter of English law?
•
Who else could or might be liable for such
losses?
•
Does the nature of AI and AI based tools give
rise to any particular di昀케culties or challenges
in attributing liability for such losses?
APRIL 2026
FEBRUARY
