AI Product Liability: The Next Wave Of Litigation

Artificial intelligence (AI) litigation is beginning to consolidate around a familiar body of doctrine: product liability. Early cases are testing whether consumer-facing AI applications are treated as products (not services) and whether alleged harms are framed as design defects, inadequate warnings, or foreseeable misuse. That shift is also being reinforced by lawmakers—most notably the European Union’s revised directive on liability for defective products (the PLD)¹ and a growing set of US state enactments (including California). Together, these developments suggest product liability will be a primary lens for the next wave of AI litigation.

This is a notable turn because many of the first headline AI disputes were framed through various adjacent doctrines—consumer protection, privacy, defamation, and intellectual property. Product liability is different: It is built to evaluate mass-distributed technologies through the lenses of defect, warnings, and foreseeability, with