ABSTRACT
Before proceding with any form of regulation, it is worth reflecting on the seemingly simple question whether the principles of contract law require adaptation or whether they are sufficiently malleable to adapt themselves’. Before subscribing to the theory that contract law is directly affected by and should respond to technological change, we must be reminded that we are in the middle of an AI summer, a period of rapid advancements, significant investments and countless headlines proclaiming the dawn of a new AI era, spurred by the rather unexpected introduction of ChatGPT into the consumer mainstream in November, 2022. In this hot climate of indiscriminate fascination with innovation and a blind belief into everything proclaimed by the big technology companies (which are trying to sell products!), it is easy to forget that AI has a long history and that interest in this field has been cyclical. The technologies – or some aspects thereof – may be new, the legal debates are not. Legal scholarship has a long history of intermittent ‘enchantments’ with various technologies that, after a period of theoretical turmoil and hype, often dissipated due to lack of uptake or the simple realization that they do not create any significant new legal problems. Alternatively, technologies that seem groundbreaking and revolutionary at first, become integrated into mainstream commerce and quickly lose their ‘groundbreaking’ character. The pressure to regulate, modernize or adapt legal principles is understandable but must be resisted. We are not only in the middle of an AI summer but, as it seems, in the middle of an AI bubble.
Mik, Eliza, Contract Law in the the Middle of an AI Summer (March 20, 2026).
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