Civil legal personality of artificial intelligence: Future or utopia?

The technology associated with artificial intelligence is developing rapidly. As a consequence, artificial intelligence is being applied in many spheres of life and increasingly affects the functioning of society. Actions of artificial intelligence may cause harm (e.g. in the case of autonomous vehicles that cause traffic accidents). Rules of civil law, especially those relating to liability for damage resulting from somebody's fault or risk, came into being before artificial intelligence's invention and mostly before the latter's significant recent development. They include the Polish Code of civil procedure, which addresses the issues associated with liability, adopted in 1964 and still in force today, although with certain amendments. Therefore, no provisions that would directly refer to artificial intelligence and legal consequences of its actions have been introduced into the Polish civil law. The same applies to European law. Therefore, the issue of whether existing regulations may be applied in the case of artificial intelligence or, perhaps, whether they should be appropriately adjusted, needs to be analysed. The starting point for this analysis is the possibility of conferring upon artificial intelligence the status of an entity under the law, allowing it to independently bear the liability for the damage caused by it. This issue needs to be examined in the context of technology used today (e.g. autonomous vehicles), and also in the future. The analysis performed herein specifies who would bear liability for the actions of artificial intelligence. The deliberations in this area are based on the achievements of Polish and European legal science. Therefore, the conclusions formulated in the article regarding legislative changes apply to all national legal orders informed by European civil law principles.