ABSTRACT
Systems based on artificial intelligence (AI) are increasingly used in everyday legal practice. They may even be used to form contracts on behalf of the system user. In such instances, it is not necessarily required for the system to identify the precise actions the system should take, from an engineering perspective. As a result, the system may close contracts that were not foreseen by its user. This causes friction with the requirement that contract formation requires the intent of the contracting parties to be bound, or that they constitute a meeting of the minds. It is rather obscure how an intent to form a specific contract or a meeting of the minds, may be present when one of the parties may not even know what contract is being closed. To tackle this challenge, this article thoroughly examines the intent requirement for various legal systems. As a result, it becomes clear that the intent requirement is often not as strictly applied, to the extent that its role is often formulated too generally. This nuance of the role that intent does play in contract formation, helps clarify that this requirement is, in fact, not an obstacle to the formation of contracts via AI systems.
Herbosch, Maarten, Contracting with Artificial Intelligence: A Comparative Analysis of the Intent to Contract (January 1, 2023), Rabels Zeitschrift für ausländisches und internationales Privatrecht, volume 88, issue NIX, 2024 [10.1628/rabelsz-2023-0076].
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