In this chapter, Thomas Burri, an international lawyer, examines how general ethical norms on AI diffuse into domestic law directly, without engaging international law. The chapter discusses various ethical AI frameworks and shows how they influenced the European Union Commission’s proposal for an AI Act. It reveals the origins of the EU proposal and explains the substance of the future EU AI regulation. The chapter concludes that, overall, international law has played a marginal role in this process; it was largely sidelined.

In this chapter, the law scholar Christine Wendehorst analyses the different potential risks posed by AI as part of two main categories, safety risks and fundamental rights risks. Based on this, the author considers why AI challenges existing liability regimes. She spells out the main solutions put forward so far and evaluates them. This chapter highlights the fact that liability for fundamental rights risks is largely unchartered while being AI-specific. Such risks are now being addressed at the level of AI safety law, by way of prohibiting certain AI practices and by imposing strict legal requirements concerning data governance, transparency, and human oversight. Wendehorst nevertheless argues that a number of changes have to be made for the emerging AI safety regime to be used as a ‘backbone’ for the future AI liability regime if this is going to help address liability for fundamental rights risks. As a result, she suggests that further negotiations about the AI Act proposed by the European Commission should be closely aligned with the preparatory work on a future AI liability regime.