Law and Technology

“The Chief Privacy Officer Program reflects that commitment, offering rigorous, practice-informed training for the peopleresponsible for privacy and AI governance at the highest levels of decision-making, in California and beyond,” said Eric Askins, assistant dean for innovation at Berkeley Law.

“Protecting youths online will be the defining internet policy battle of 2026,” writes Professor Catherine Crump.

Colleen Chien, a professor of law at U.C. Berkeley School of Law, told Mashable that companies can be more careful when licensing their technology by creating a “vetted partner” program that places key restrictions on the licensee. This process could include requiring licensees to complete certification or training to ensure they’re using the technology safely and appropriately.

In holding the startup to account for these tragedies, the families were testing a legal argument that hasn’t yet won in court. But the mere prospect of the families winning likely pushed Google to settle, according to Vincent Joralemon, the director of the Berkeley Law Life Sciences Law & Policy Center. Joralemon said a single wrongful death lawsuit can result in a $20 million to $100 million judgment because the damages are meant to punish the companies, not just pay the wronged plaintiffs. Joralemon said that level of legal risk extends to the entire AI industry.

Should disputes over the images wind up in court, Vincent Joralemon, director of the Life Sciences Law & Policy Center and UC Berkeley’s law school, said he wouldn’t want to be charged with defending them. That’s because the victims of such images were likely to find sympathetic judges and jurors, he said.

“Everyone talks about leadership as influence,” writes Angeli Patel, executive director, Berkeley Center for Law and Business. “I think it’s more like stewardship: of attention, energy, and discernment. And in this AI-driven, globally-unstable moment, the real leaders are the ones who can say no to speed and create solutions with calm.”

“Today’s lawyers need to integrate technology into their practice, not just understand it in theory,” said Chris Jay Hoofnagle, professor and faculty co-director at the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology. “Learning to think like a lawyer in the age of AI means using machine learning, computer vision and other digital tools ethically and effectively to investigate, analyze and advocate.”

Catherine Crump, a clinical professor at Berkeley Law School in California who specializes in artificial intelligence and technology law, says that of course it’s not smart to Google or use ChatGPT to figure out how to further a crime or how to harm someone. Crump says it is important for people, especially children, to recognize that ChatGPT is a product and “not your friend.”

Andrea Roth, a professor at University of California, Berkeley Law, who proposed some changes to the committee, warned that the use of the words “simple” and “scientific” could “create mischief and unnecessary litigation.” She also said the proposed phrase “machine-learning” was “both under and over inclusive,” as it may omit complex algorithms that merit scrutiny.

“When you use works to train a model, you’re basically using them not for the expression […] but you’re using them as data,” said Pamela Samuelson, a UC Berkeley digital copyright professor who co-directs its law and technology center. When it comes to visual outputs, she said, “There’s something much more immediately expressive about graphical works, particularly characters.”