Artificial Intelligence (AI) solutions are becoming common in the workplace across industries. However, the integration of AI into workplace systems brings with it a host of legal considerations that employers must carefully navigate to avoid potential liabilities. This post will give you a high level overview of legal implications of using AI in the workplace.
Employment Law Compliance:
AI applications, such as automated decision-making systems in hiring, promotions, and terminations, can raise significant legal issues under employment laws. Employers must ensure that their AI tools do not result in discriminatory outcomes as prohibited under laws such as the Civil Rights Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act, and other applicable anti-discrimination statutes.
What to do:
- Conduct regular audits of AI systems to ensure outcomes are free from bias.
- Implement transparent AI decision processes and provide explanations for decisions when needed.
- Ensure there is a human review of any decisions made by AI.
Privacy and Data Protection Compliance
The use of AI in the workplace often involves processing large quantities of personally identifiable information, including sensitive employee information. This raises important concerns under privacy laws like GDPR in Europe, CCPA in California, and other regional data protection laws.
What to do:
- Secure explicit consent from employees for data collection where required.
- Maintain robust data protection measures to prevent unauthorized access and breaches.
- Implement industry standard information security measures, and comply with applicable industry specific regulations such as HIPAA or FINRA.
- Ensure data processing activities are clearly disclosed to employees.
- Ensure only the minimally required data is shared with AI providers.
Intellectual Property Rights
AI can generate new content, from written material to software code, which can lead to disputes over intellectual property (IP) ownership between the employer and employees or between the company and AI vendors and third parties. In fact, there is a host of active litigation involving intellectual property rights and AI solutions.
What to do:
- Define ownership of IP rights in employment agreements and vendor contracts.
- Consider the implications of copyright law, especially regarding works created by AI.
- Audit what is being created by your AI tools to ensure it is not violating a third parties intellectual property rights.
- Ensure that employees are using AI responsibly, for specific and identified reasons.
Contractual Obligations and Liability
The deployment of AI technologies can also affect contractual obligations. AI-driven processes must comply with all contractual standards agreed upon with clients and partners, and businesses need to manage the liability risks that could arise from AI errors or failures.
What to do:
- Review and update contracts to include clauses that address AI implementation.
- Give clear notice, and receive clear consent about the use of AI tools and the sharing of the related data with AI vendors.
- Establish clear liability provisions for AI-induced errors or omissions.
- Double and triple check anything generated by AI tools to ensure applicability and legality.
Ethical Considerations
Beyond legal compliance, there is a growing expectation for businesses to use AI ethically. This involves considerations about transparency, fairness, and accountability in AI deployments, which can influence public trust and corporate reputation.
What to do:
- Develop and enforce a set of AI ethics guidelines for your organization.
- Create an AI use rulebook for your team, including clearly identifying the limited scope that AI tools can be used for.
- Engage stakeholders in discussions about ethical AI use and impact.
LET US HELP
This post is providing a high level overview of legal considerations for using AI in the workplace. There are many more nuances and specifics, and you should have an experienced attorney assist you. Kader Law can help. If you’re interested, feel free to contact us.
This post is not legal advice, and does not establish any attorney client privilege between Law Office of K.S. Kader, PLLC and you, the reader. The content of this post was assisted by generative artificial intelligence solutions.