This chapter explores how automated legal guidance helps both federal agencies and members of the public. It outlines several specific benefits, including administrative efficiency, communication of complex law in plain language, transparency regarding agency interpretations of the law, internal and external consistency regarding agency communications, and public engagement with the law.

This chapter identifies and explores a central feature of automated legal guidance: “simplexity.” As this chapter introduces this term, simplexity occurs when the government presents clear and simple explanations of the law without highlighting its underlying complexity or reducing this complexity through formal legal changes. Automated legal guidance inherently relies on simplexity as a result of the tension between the complexity of the law and the need of agencies to explain the law in simple terms. In creating the law, the federal government must address complex problems, and it often does so by creating legislation that is replete with errors, ambiguities, and problems. This disconnect between complex federal law and agencies’ need to explain the law to the public in simple and understandable ways forces agencies to rely on simplexity. Automated legal guidance only exacerbates the need for simplexity, because when individuals use automated online tools offered by government agencies, they expect the explanations to be even simpler, more straightforward, and easier to apply than would be the case if they were relying upon written agency publications.

This chapter explores how artificial intelligence has enabled the automation of customer service in private industry, such as through online tools that assist customers in purchasing airline tickets, troubleshoot internet outages, and provide personal banking services. Private industry has used machine learning, as well as other forms of artificial intelligence, to develop chatbots and virtual assistants, which can respond to conversational oral or text-based commands. These tools have rapidly become standard customer service vehicles. Recent developments suggest that automated customer service, such as large language models, will become even more sophisticated in the future.

This chapter describes interviews the authors conducted with federal agency officials about their use of automated legal guidance. This chapter offers insights gained from these interviews, including regarding the different models that agencies use to develop such guidance, their views on the usability of such guidance, the ways that agencies evaluate the guidance, and agencies’ views on successes and challenges that such guidance faces.

This chapter examines the extent to which e-commerce platforms may be held liable for problematic goods sold by third-party sellers on their websites. Several courts have hesitated to find e-commerce platforms liable under products liability and warranty law for products sold on their marketplaces by third-party sellers. This chapter argues that the increasing shift from in-person sales of goods to online sales necessitates a shift in current interpretations of key principles under state products liability and warranty law under Article 2 of the Uniform Commercial Code to better protect consumer interests. E-commerce platforms should, upon meeting certain criteria, be viewed as sellers and merchants for purposes of Article 2 warranties and products liability law. This chapter also highlights the role of state consumer law mandating product warnings and the federal Communications Decency Act, which, in some cases, may pose a hurdle to successful consumer claims against e-commerce platforms. The chapter concludes by offering a path forward.

3D printing, or additive manufacturing, has consequences for intellectual property (IP) law and for business models. The mechanical and digital technology of 3D printing enables the creations of a three-dimensional object from a digital 3D software model in a Computer-aided Design (CAD) file. The 3D printing platforms for creating, modifying, and transferring CAD files can take place in digital form easily and quickly, which presents opportunities for copying and raises new IP law protection considerations. 3D printing’s proliferating use by hobbyists and in new industries transforms traditional methods of creation, distribution, and sale of goods through the use of CAD files, and, in so doing, raises questions about the scope of IP legal protection and necessitates reevaluation of IP statutes. 3D printing’s technological advancement may require IP laws to evolve and respond to the nature of the technology. In addition, 3D printing raises new considerations for business models and for the supply chain due to the technology’s ability to provide complexity, customization, efficiency, expansive range of applications, and modularization. Moreover, the digital nature of CAD files, which embody physical objects in digital form, transforms design, modification, and transfer of objects and parts, reallocating production of objects to be more nimble and more flexible. As such, 3D printing can enable a new way to mass customize and can replace mass production in ways that allow new business entities to capture a new way of creating value.

Quantum technologies are promising to become one of the most impactful emerging technologies of the century. As governments and the private sector race to achieve quantum supremacy, it is crucial for the legal community to understand and analyze how these technologies will influence societies and shape consumer experiences. This essay offers an overview of the potential impacts of Quantum Information Science and Technology (QIST) on privacy as we know it today. It reviews quantum computers, quantum internet, quantum encryptions, and quantum sensing to offer a brief introduction of these fields for the legal community. This essay then proposes a novel analytical framework for future scholarly work on QIST privacy impacts. It concludes that QIST could have primary and secondary effects on privacy that would both improve and undermine privacy. Understanding the challenges that privacy scholars may soon face and having a robust framework to work with is a crucial step for future research in this emerging area of study.

The right to repair not only has important consumer value by preserving the useful life of existing products, but it also has additional and important social value by conserving natural resources and reducing pollution. However, the consumer right to repair in recent years has come under threat through the overextension by intellectual property (IP) doctrines that avoid current limits on antitrust liability by leasing or licensing rather than selling products to avoid “exhausting” IP rights and by applying IP rights to smaller portions of overall sold products, thereby treating parts rehabilitation or parts supply as prohibited acts of making or importation. Constitutional conflicts preemption might address some of these concerns, but federal legislation also is needed to protect consumers’ right to repair their purchased products.

This chapter explores the intersection of property law and consumer protection in the digital age, particularly in the context of purchasing technological or digital goods. The unique nature of transactions involving autonomous vehicles, drones, robot-chefs, smart appliances, and eBooks raises questions about the traditional understanding of property rights. While existing critiques often rely on contract law and consumer protection regulations, this chapter argues for the affirmative use of property law in addressing the challenges posed by the restricted usability and alienability of digital products. The prevailing assumption that property law is unsuitable for such issues is challenged, and the chapter advocates for a theoretical and normative shift. By analyzing the regulation and management of technological property through a property law lens, the chapter proposes a new perspective and outlines a roadmap for understanding and addressing the property challenges inherent in the digital consumer landscape.

The EU is attempting to indirectly regulate the Internet of Things by improving access to data through a cross-sectoral data governance framework. On the face of it, recent EU data governance laws – Data Governance Act, Digital Markets Act, Digital Services Act, AI Act – go in the direction of more open, accessible, and reusable data. However, they tend to balance that ethos with provisions that IoT big tech can use to retain and strengthen data enclosures. This chapter aims to critically assess whether the attempt to balance openness and IP results in the prevalence of closed IoT systems, thus ultimately preventing smart data from reuse that would otherwise benefit society at large.

The auction of Bored Ape #8817 for $3.4 million in October 2021 marked a watershed moment in the escalating trend of non-fungible tokens (NFTs). This chapter ventures into the core of the tokenization phenomenon, scrutinizing the legal implications of creating digital representations (tokens) of diverse assets. Amid the burgeoning NFT market, a pivotal question emerges: What precisely are the property rights conferred upon those acquiring these tokens? Beyond the staggering sales figures, the chapter dissects the tokenization process, emphasizing the NFT minting process and blockchain technology. It explores claims that NFTs herald the future of digital property, challenging traditional governmental powers. Anticipating legal challenges, the chapter navigates critical inquiries about token holders’ rights, the tethering (or not) of tokens to underlying assets, and the impact of the 2022 Uniform Commercial Code revisions. This chapter seeks to provide a nuanced perspective, unraveling legal realities from the fervor surrounding tokenization’s transformative potential in the digital era.

Large Language Models can be used to summarize and simplify complex texts. In this study, we investigate the extent to which state-of-the-art models can reliably operate as “smart readers”: applications that empower consumers to tackle lengthy, difficult-to-read, and inaccessible standard form contracts and privacy policies.

Recent years have seen new technologies disrupt many established industries and institutions, continually testing our imaginations and expectations. Accordingly, it is no surprise that technology is disrupting the law. Moreover, the COVID-19 pandemic generated new disputes and a need for expanded access to online means for resolving those disputes, especially for consumers. As a result, lawyers, judges, software developers, and policymakers have been exploring ways to utilize technology in expanding access to the courts and dispute resolution. With this in mind, scholars and policymakers have argued for “online dispute resolution” (ODR) to expand access to justice (A2J). This chapter discusses the evolution of ODR in recent years, as well as emerging issues in ODR that deserve attention in order to craft ODR that lives up to the promise in advancing A2J.

The past decade has seen a plethora of new product lines in “smart” consumer goods and systems thanks to technological developments that have allowed for the computerization and internet connectivity of many previously “dumb” objects, buildings, and environments. These new products will inevitably develop defects that require resolutions, and add to the ever-growing problem of e-waste. This chapter examines the recommendations of the recent Productivity Commission (PC) Inquiry regarding the “right to repair” (R2R) through the lens of cyber-physical devices and systems, such as the Internet of Things. A stronger R2R for independent repairers (individual, community, or commercial), particularly in the context of these new products, would assist in achieving several of the United Nations’ sustainable development goals. The PC Inquiry has produced some recommendations that will strengthen the R2R in Australia. However, these recommendations, while welcome, also contain some significant gaps in relation to promoting sustainable consumption by consumers.