Artificial intelligence (AI) has become an area of strategic importance, a key driver of economic development and more importantly a part of our everyday lives.

Undoubtedly, AI has the potential to bring solutions to some of the world’s biggest challenges, from treating chronic diseases or helping us transport people and goods in a more efficient way to providing a more functional justice system for all.

However, as the EU Commission points out, legal and ethical impacts have to be carefully addressed.

While moving steadily towards an “Algorithmic Society”, the links between the way technology and the legal framework evolve become inextricable.

In the EU alone, there is an ongoing conversation on key topics, like ​ consumer protection and AI​, liability issues from the use of AI​, and ​ Intellectual Property rights concerning AI systems​ , while the ​ EU strategy on AI was published only a few days ago and is expected to be followed by several debates and legislative initiatives.

In the same time, the Council of Europe has recently published its ​ Charter on the use of AI on judicial systems​ , providing a new aspect on the interplay of AI and the law.

In this context, we firmly believe that bringing legal professionals and AI experts is of crucial importance for the development of research and market initiatives.

Aiming at maximizing the benefits from this session, the workshop will mix invited talks from distinguished academics, panels consisting of scholars and representatives of the industry with demo sessions, which will focus on the legal implications of developing and using AI systems in practice.

Accompanied by a list of presentations of accepted papers, which will focus on a range of legal issues concerning AI, such as explainability, IP rights and liability, the workshop is expected to attract the interest of the SETN 2020 attendants and could lead to a publication with a comprehensive overview of the legal framework on AI and potential applications of AI in our legal system.