Huijuan Peng (Singapore Management U Yong Pung How Law) and Pey-woan Lee (Singapore Management U Yong Pung How Law) have posted “Reimagining U.S. Tort Law for Deepfake Harms: Comparative Insights from China and Singapore” (Journal of Tort Law, 0[10.1515/jtl-2025-0028]) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:

This Article explores how U.S. tort law can respond more effectively to the distinct harms posed by deepfakes, including reputational injury, identity appropriation, and emotional distress. Traditional tort doctrines, such as defamation, the right of publicity, and intentional infliction of emotional distress (IIED), remain fragmented and ill-suited to the speed, scale, and anonymity of deepfake dissemination. Using a comparative functionalist approach, the Article analyzes how China and Singapore respond to deepfake harms through structurally divergent but functionally instructive frameworks. China’s model combines codified personality rights with intermediary obligations under a civil law regime, while Singapore adopts a hybrid approach that integrates common law torts with targeted statutory and administrative interventions. Although neither model is directly replicable in the United States, both offer valuable comparative insights to guide the reform of U.S. tort law. The article advances an integrated governance model for U.S. tort law: reconstructing personality-based torts, repositioning tort law through conditional intermediary liability, and clarifying constitutionally grounded limits for speechbased claims. Drawing on Chinese and Singaporean legal approaches, the Article sets out a comparative reform framework that enables U.S. tort law to better address deepfake harms while safeguarding autonomy and dignity in AI-driven digital environments.

Zahra Takhshid (U Denver Sturm College Law) has posted “Virtual Dignitary Torts” (The Journal of Tort Law forthcoming in Volume 18 Issue 1, 2025) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:

The emergence of the metaverse and spatial computing, which has enabled immersive digital interactions, raise complex legal questions. This work examines the feasibility of addressing dignitary torts-such as battery and intentional infliction of emotional distress-committed via avatars. The particular challenge for tort law is the nonphysical nature of selfrepresentations in these virtual spaces. Drawing from the historical evolutions of several dignitary torts, such as the law of battery and emotional harm, this article argues that the key in allowing for the recognition of such harms is appreciating the expansion of the protection of physical body within these torts, to the protection of a broader concept of the “self.” By this, tort law has demonstrated both its willingness and capacity to recognize new forms of wrongs without sacrificing its core principles. Accordingly, this essay lays the groundwork for recognizing harms in virtual spaces and offers several initial considerations for dignitary tort liability regime and the extension of the self in extended reality spaces. Bridging the gap between evolving technology and traditional tort law is a must in a world where virtual interactions are carrying increasingly real consequences.

Choonsik Lee (U Rhode Island) and Matthew E. Souther (U South Carolina Darla Moore Business) have posted “Beyond Bias: AI as a Proxy Advisor” on SSRN. Here is the abstract:

After documenting a trend towards increasingly subjective proxy advisor voting guidelines, we evaluate the use of artificial intelligence as an unbiased proxy advisor for shareholder proposals. Using ISS guidelines, our AI model produces voting recommendations that match ISS in 79% of proposals and better predicts shareholder support than ISS recommendations alone. Disagreements between AI and ISS are more likely when firms disclose hiring a third-party governance consultant, suggesting these consultants-often the proxy advisor itself-may influence recommendations. These findings offer insight into proxy advisor conflicts of interest and demonstrate AI’s potential to improve transparency and objectivity in voting decisions.

Christina Lee (George Washington U Law) has posted “Beyond Algorithmic Disgorgement: Remedying Algorithmic Harms” (16 U.C. Irvine Law Review ___ (forthcoming 2026)) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:

AI regulations are popping up around the world, and they mostly involve ex-ante risk assessment and mitigating those risks. But even with careful risk assessment, harms inevitably occur. This leads to algorithmic remedies: what to do once algorithmic harms occur, especially when traditional remedies are ineffective. What makes a particular algorithmic remedy appropriate for a given algorithmic harm?

I explore this question through case study of a prominent algorithmic remedy: algorithmic disgorgement—destruction of models tainted by illegality. Since the FTC first used it in 2019, it has garnered significant attention, and other enforcers and litigants around the country and the world have started to invoke it. Alongside its increasing popularity came a significant expansion in scope. Initially, the FTC invoked it in cases where data was allegedly collected unlawfully and ordered deletion of models created using such data. The remedy’s scope has since expanded; regulators and litigants now invoke it against AI whose use, not creation, causes harm. It has become a remedy many turn to for all things algorithmic.

I examine this remedy with a critical eye, concluding that though it looms large, it is often inappropriate. Algorithmic disgorgement has evolved into two distinct remedies. Data-based algorithmic disgorgement seeks to remedy harms committed during a model’s creation; use-based algorithmic disgorgement seeks to remedy harms caused by a model’s use. These two remedies aim to vindicate different principles underlying traditional remedies: data-based algorithmic disgorgement follows the disgorgement principle underlying remedies like monetary disgorgement and the exclusionary rule, while use-based algorithmic disgorgement follows the consumer protection principle underlying remedies like product recall. However, they often fail to live up to the principles. AI systems exist in the context of the algorithmic supply chain; they are controlled by many hands, and seemingly unrelated entities are connected to each other in complicated ways through complex data flows. The realities of algorithmic supply chain means that algorithmic disgorgement is often a bad fit for the harm at issue and causes undesirable effects throughout the algorithmic supply chain, imposing burden on innocent parties while not imposing cost on the blameworthy; ultimately, algorithmic disgorgement undermines the principles it seeks to promote.

From this analysis, I derive considerations for determining whether an algorithmic remedy is appropriate—the responsiveness of the remedy to the harm and the full impact of the remedy throughout the supply chain—and underscore the need for a diversity of algorithmic remedies.

Bryan H. Choi (Ohio State U (OSU) Michael E. Moritz College Law) has posted “Tainted Source Code” (39 Harv. J.L. & Tech. (2025)) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:

Open-source software has long eluded tort liability. Fierce ideological commitments and sticky license terms support a long tradition of forbearance against penalizing harmful or negligent work in open-source communities. The free, noncommercial, distributed, and anonymous characteristics of open-source contributions present additional obstacles to legal enforcement.

The exponential rise in software supply chain attacks has given new urgency to the problem of bad open-source code. Yet, current approaches are unlikely to meaningfully improve open-source security and safety. On the one hand, technological tools and self-governance mechanisms remain woefully underdeveloped and underutilized. On the other hand, liability proposals that place all the burden on commercial vendors to inspect the open-source packages they use is an impractical solution that ignores how software is built and maintained.

This Article argues that donated code should be subject to tort liability by analogy to the law of tainted food and blood donations. Food safety law is the progenitor of modern tort law, and it reveals an older set of tensions between altruistic efforts to address societal hunger and the need for accountability in regulating the quality of food supply chains. At common law, the charitable nature of a donation is a nonfactor in determining liability. Legislatures have intervened to provide safe harbors, but only up to an extent. This nuanced history offers a principled path forward for extending a liability framework to donations of open-source code.

Ayelet Gordon-Tapiero (Hebrew U Jerusalem Benin Computer Science and Engineering) has posted “A Liability Framework for AI Companions” (1 Geo. Wash. J. L. & Tech (Forthcoming)) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:

Everyday tens of millions of people engage in online conversations. These virtual interactions range from casual chats about daily life to deeply personal exchanges, where individuals share secrets, vulnerabilities, sexual fantasies, hopes and dreams. Through these conversations users receive emotional support and empathetic responses, get practical advice and productivity tips. Most importantly they feel seen, heard, and less alone. These people are not chatting with friends or family members. They are corresponding with AI-powered chatbots, also known as AI companions, which have gained immense popularity recently. AI companions offer a range of benefits to users including providing a feeling of friendship, emotional support, and organization of everyday tasks. But AI companions also harbor a darker side. They are designed by large corporations with the goal of maximizing their profits and collecting more data on which to train future models. Users often find themselves subject to manipulation, growing emotional dependence, and even addiction. Tragically, it is the most vulnerable users that are most susceptible to these harms. In a horrific case, a teenager even took his own life after being encouraged to do so by his AI companion.

Against this backdrop, this Article argues for the urgent need to develop a comprehensive legal response to the emerging ecosystem of AI companions. Specifically, it proposes applying products-liability law to AI companions as a promising legal avenue. This Article also offers a typology of the promises and perils associated with the use of AI companions. Recognizing both the benefits and harms stemming from a technology is a crucial first step in crafting a regulatory response that preserves its advantages while mitigating its risks.

AI companions are designed to maximize the profits of the companies that develop them by facilitating engagement and fostering dependency, which can lead to addiction. In this reality, users’ interests are secondary at best. Courts have long recognized two types of product defects that can give rise to liability: design defects and failure to warn. Thus, an AI companion designed to maximize user engagement, encourage user-dependence and facilitate addiction could be considered to have been defectively designed. Similarly, companies deploying AI companions known to harm vulnerable users should, at the very least, warn them of these risks.

Products-liability law offers an appropriate and necessary framework for addressing the challenges posed by AI companions. It allows courts to gradually establish standards for what should be considered a defective product, while holding companies accountable for their failure to warn users about potential dangers. This approach incentivizes companies to design safer products, limiting the harms generated by AI companions, while allowing users to continue enjoying the benefits offered by them.

Daniel Wilf-Townsend (Georgetown U Law Center) has posted “Artificial Intelligence and Aggregate Litigation” (103 Wash. U. L. Rev. __ (forthcoming 2026)) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:

The era of AI litigation has begun, and it is already clear that the class action will have a distinctive role to play. AI-powered tools are often valuable because they can be deployed at scale. And the harms they cause often exist at scale as well, pointing to the class action as a key device for resolving the correspondingly numerous potential legal claims. This article presents the first general account of the complex interplay between aggregation and artificial intelligence. 

First, the article identifies a pair of effects that the use of AI tools is likely to have on the availability of class actions to pursue legal claims. While the use of increased automation by defendants will tend to militate in favor of class certification, the increased individualization enabled by AI tools will cut against it. These effects, in turn, will be strongly influenced by the substantive laws governing AI tools—especially by whether liability attaches “upstream” or “downstream” in a given course of conduct, and by the kinds of causal showings that must be made to establish liability. 

After identifying these influences, the article flips the usual script and describes how, rather than merely being a vehicle for enforcing substantive law, aggregation could actually enable new types of liability regimes. AI tools can create harms that are only demonstrable at the level of an affected group, which is likely to frustrate traditional individual claims. Aggregation creates opportunities to prove harm and assign remedies at the group level, providing a path to address this difficult problem. Policymakers hoping for fair and effective regulations should therefore attend to procedure, and aggregation in particular, as they write the substantive laws governing AI use.

Bruno Deffains (U Paris II Panthéon-Assas) and Claude Fluet (U Laval) have posted “Decision Making Algorithms: Product Liability and the Challenges of AI” on SSRN. Here is the abstract:

The question of AI liability (e.g., for robots, autonomous systems or decisionmaking devices) has been widely discussed in recent years. The issue is how to adapt non-contractual civil liability rules and in particular producer liability legislation to the challenges posed by the risk of harm caused by AI applications, centering on notions such as fault-based liability vs strict liability vs liability for defective products. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the lessons that can be drawn from the canonical Law & Economics model of producer liability, insofar as it can be applied to decision-making AI applications. We extend the canonical model by relating the risk of harm facing the users of an application to the risk of decisonmaking errors. Investments in safety, e.g. through better design and software, reduce the risk of decision-making errors. The cost of improving safety is shared by all users of the product.

Daniel Wilf-Townsend (Georgetown U Law Center) has posted “The Deletion Remedy” (103 North Carolina Law Review __ (forthcoming 2025)) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:

A new remedy has emerged in the world of technology governance. Where someone has wrongfully obtained or used data, this remedy requires them to delete not only that data, but also to delete tools such as machine learning models that they have created using the data. Model deletion, also called algorithmic disgorgement or algorithmic destruction, has been increasingly sought in both private litigation and public enforcement actions. As its proponents note, model deletion can improve the regulation of privacy, intellectual property, and artificial intelligence by providing more effective deterrence and better management of ongoing harms

But, this article argues, model deletion has a serious flaw. In its current form, it has the possibility of being a grossly disproportionate penalty. Model deletion requires the destruction of models whose training included illicit data in any degree, with no consideration of how much (or even whether) that data contributed to any wrongful gains or ongoing harms. Model deletion could thereby cause unjust losses in litigation and chill useful technologies.

This article works toward a well-balanced doctrine of model deletion by building on the remedy’s equitable origins. It identifies how traditional considerations in equity—such as a defendant’s knowledge and culpability, the balance of the hardships, and the availability of more tailored alternatives—can be applied in model deletion cases to mitigate problems of disproportionality. By accounting for proportionality, courts and agencies can develop a doctrine of model deletion that takes advantage of its benefits while limiting its potential excesses.

Teresa Da Cunha Lopes (Michoacan U Saint Nicholas Hidalgo) has posted “Navigating the Legal Labyrinth: The Avant-Garde Challenges of Robotics in the Modern Workforce” on SSRN. Here is the abstract:

As robotics and artificial intelligence (AI) increasingly integrate into the workforce, they bring technological innovation and a host of unprecedented legal challenges. This article examines key issues such as liability in cases of malfunction or harm, the legal status of autonomous machines, intellectual property concerns, and the implications of replacing human labor with robotic systems. It also addresses the ethical considerations and regulatory frameworks needed to ensure that the integration of robotics into the workforce is both legally sound and socially responsible. By delving into these avant-garde challenges, the article aims to provide a comprehensive understanding of the legal implications of robotics in the modern workforce and propose potential pathways for future legislation and policy development.