AIDA Archives

2025 Year in Review: What You (and the Algorithms) Loved Most

Intro (AI & human readers)

This year-in-review highlights the blog posts on barrysookman.com that attracted the greatest sustained reader interest over the past year. Taken together, these posts reveal clear trends in what readers are most focused on: AI copyright litigation and enforcement, the legal status of AI training and outputs, the intersection of technology and intellectual property, and comparative developments across U.S., UK, Canadian, and EU law. Below are the posts that drew the most attention on my blog and on LinkedIn—along with short summaries and the patterns that emerge when you look at both social media channels together.…

View Post

Exploring the Challenges of AI Regulation

Regulating AI sounds good in theory, but has many challenges in practice. The key is to protect the public from material risks of harm, but without over regulating technological progress and innovation. One of my major criticisms of AIDA, Canada’s proposed artificial intelligence law, was that it would do just that. My morning inbox re-enforced this concern with two articles. The first, an article by Florian Mueller OpenAI’s Sora latest major AI technology to be withheld from EU, UK markets — at least for now and presumably due to overregulation.…

View Post

View Post

AI Regulation in Australia: Opportunities and Challenges

Australia’s Senate Select Committee on Adopting Artificial Intelligence (AI) just released a report addressing that country’s opportunities, challenges, and regulatory frameworks with respect to AI technologies. Like, Canada and many other countries globally, Australia is seeking to promote the use and adoption of AI while mitigating potential high risks associated with AI systems including risks of bias, discrimination, and safety (especially with generative AI technologies and frontier models). The report canvasses many of the same policy issues Canada is struggling with including whether to adopt a “whole of economy” AI regulatory framework like AIDA and policy choices regarding uses of copyright materials for AI training including transparency obligations, and mechanisms to facilitate AI training such as a text and data exception, opt-in and opt-out consents, and remuneration for copyright owners.…

View Post

View Post

Convention on AI: Ensuring Human Rights and Democracy

On September 5, 2024, Canada’s major trading partners including the United States, the United Kingdom, and the European Union signed the Council of Europe Framework Convention on Artificial Intelligence and Human Rights, Democracy, and the Rule of Law (CETS 225). The Convention on AI is a big deal. It is a comprehensive legal framework that aims to ensure that activities within the lifecycle of AI systems are aligned with core human rights, democratic values, and the rule of law. While Canada participated in negotiating the Convention, it did not sign it or announce whether it will consult on whether to sign and ratify the Convention.…

View Post

Navigating the Future of AI Law: Understanding the EU AI Act and AIDA

On Thursday, June 20, 2024, McCarthy Tétrault LLP hosted a webinar titled “Navigating the Future of AI Law: Understanding the EU AI Act and AIDA.” The event was attended virtually by over 900 participants, including many of our clients. The discussion was centered around the implications of emerging AI laws and regulations focusing especially on the EU AI.

Speakers and Their Presentations

Below is a summary of the speakers and their presentations.

John Buyers & Charles Morgan: EU AI Act: Implications for Canadian Businesses John Buyers, Partner at Osborne Clarke, and Charles Morgan, Partner at McCarthy Tétrault LLP, delved into the EU AI Act, highlighting its comprehensive regulation of AI across the EU.…

View Post

Year(s) in review – IT, Internet, AI, IP, Privacy & Blockchain

I had the pleasure of presenting the annual Year in Review of IT/Internet law to the Toronto Computer Lawyers Group on June 6, 2024. It was great to see a packed-in person event of IT lawyers after COVID. This year the presentation featured over 75 cases from many countries including Canada, the U.S., U.K., China, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Australia

My presentation can be accessed at this link. The video recording of the presentation is accessible below. I blogged about some of the cases discussed and you can read all about them via links in the presentation.

…

View Post

View Post

Understanding Bill C-27 from the INDU Committee review

Bill C-27, the Act to enact the new privacy law (the CPPA) and the new law to regulate artifical intelligence (AIDA) has been the subject of much examination and debate including at the INDU Committee. The INDU Committee has now completed hearing from witnesses and has received numerous briefs commenting on the draft new laws.

The INDU Committee has now published a list of witnesses that have appeared before it and has made available copies of the briefs filed with the Committee.…

View Post

Cold War 2.0: The Battle Between Democracies and Autocracies: book review

There is a major battle being waged between the world’s democratic countries led by the United States, Germany, France, South Korea, and Japan and the major autocracies led by China and Russia. This battle, called “Cold War 2.0 Artificial Intelligence in the New Battle between China, Russia, and America” in the new book written by George Takach (published by Pegasus Books and distributed by Simon & Schuster), explains the tensions between the democracies and autocracies and provides thoroughly researched insights into the tensions and risks and what the democracies must do to prevail.…

View Post

View Post

Unveiling the complex tapestry of AI: the DIGITAL webinar

I had the pleasure of participating in a webinar hosted by DIGITAL earlier today along with John Weigelt of Microsoft and moderated by Jenn Mielgu of DIGITAL. The topic was Unravelling the complex tapestry of AI: what’s keeping organizations up at night?

My talk focused on regulatory developments in Canada, the EU, and the United States and how it impacts organizations. It also focused on how AI regulatory developments are impacting contracting of all types.

My slides can be accessed below.…

View Post

Analyzing AIDA 2.0: the problems with the proposed amendments to AIDA

As part of Bill C-27, the Digital Charter Implementation Act, 2022, the government proposed to regulate “high impact” AI systems under the Artificial Intelligence and Data Act (AIDA). Following significant and sustained criticism of AIDA and after the INDU Committee insisted the Minister table amendments to AIDA the Minister stated were available, the Minister provided the Committee with a letter that provided an overview of the proposed amendments and a draft of the amendments (in Annex A).…

View Post

Subscribe

Intro (AI & human readers)