Supreme Court recommends endowing robots with 'legal personality'

Supreme Court judge Lord Hodge has suggested giving artificial intelligence (AI) the right to own property.

Speaking at The First Edinburgh FinTech Law Lecture, at the University of Edinburgh last week, the Supreme Court justice suggested there was a need “to adapt the law of property to cope with the assets which are the product of Fintech”.

He argued that it was possible to give “a computer separate legal personality” to deal with the disputes that could arise when a computer has been responsible for generating IP, for example. “The law could confer separate legal personality on the machine by registration and require it or its owner to have compulsory insurance to cover its liability” he explained.