Chanley Howell on AI Cloning – 'Risks can outweigh the benefits'

Foley & Lardner LLP partner Chanley Howell addressed potential risks for companies working with AI vendors in the TechTarget article, “Experts: AI digital humans come with benefits — and risks.”

“You have a lot of companies kicking and screaming and scratching to make money and make profits and have very aggressive salespeople,” Howell explained, highlighting the need for caution when working with vendors in the space. “With aggressive sales tactics, you could certainly have some misleading statements and use cases.”

Howell said there is value in requiring AI suppliers to cooperate in a lawsuit, investigation, or regulatory enforcement action but noted that getting a vendor to agree to such a contractual obligation can prove difficult.

“The bigger the deal, the more likely the AI vendor will say, ‘OK, we don’t like this, but we’ll do it to get the deal done,'” he said. “But the initial reaction is a hard no.”

Howell added that legal challenges have seen some Foley clients skip AI cloning, highlighting one instance in particular where plans were cancelled to clone the voices of company executives for internal messages to employees.

“Even if they trusted the vendor, the risks of that getting out or something going wrong outweighed the benefits,” Howell said.