Why data protection legislation offers a powerful tool for regulating AI
For some, it may have come as a surprise that the first existential legal challenges large language models (LLMs) faced after their market launch were under data protection law, a legal field that looks arcane in the eyes of those enthralled by novel Artificial Intelligence (AI) law, or AI ethics and governance principles. But data protection law was created in the 1960s and 1970s specifically in response to automation, computers and the idea of future “thinking machines”.
The fact that it is now immediately relevant to AI systems, including the most complex ones, is not an unintended consequence. To some extent, the current wave of AI law and governance principles could be seen as the next generation of data protection law. Yet if it is not developed in parallel and if it fails to build coherently on the existing body of data protection laws, practice and thinking, it risks missing the mark.
