From 18 October 2020 to 10 January 2021, the European Commission ran public consultations assessing the Product Liability Directive as regards digital economy products and the closed-circuit economy. Additional two goals were: first, collecting opinions on improving the Directive to accommodate for AI based products used by producers, and second, defining possible adjustments for country-specific liability laws.
The consultations were open to all the parties, i.e. citizens, the academia, member state authorities, as well as producers and software designers.
The consultation form was divided into two sections. The first concerned the procedure of defective product loss compensation for consumers. The second regarded the manner of solving issues of compensations for losses resulting from AI system usage. We presented our opinions in both sections.
189 remarks have been submitted so far. It is worth noting that only 3.7% of these were submitted by NGOs, whereas over 60% were submitted by the European Union citizens. The highest activity – almost 50% of the remarks - came from Germany, while only 3% from Poland. We are waiting for feedback including the general conclusions from the consultations.
Written by: Anna Wyszecka, AI Researcher at Moje Państwo Foundation