WHY IT IS UNREASONABLE AND UNJUST TO GRANT LEGAL PERSONHOOD TO ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
AUTHOR – UTKARSH RAGHUNATH, STUDENT AT SCHOOL OF LAW, CHRIST (DEEMED TO BE UNIVERSITY)
BEST CITATION – UTKARSH RAGHUNATH, WHY IT IS UNREASONABLE AND UNJUST TO GRANT LEGAL PERSONHOOD TO ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE, INDIAN JOURNAL OF LEGAL REVIEW (IJLR), 6 (2) OF 2026, PG. 821-829, APIS – 3920 – 0001 & ISSN – 2583-2344. DOI -https://doi.org/10.65393/RFCM8213
ABSTRACT
The emergence of Artificial Intelligence has come up with serious controversies concerning whether autonomous technological systems are legally considered or not.[1] Other academics and policy makers have suggested that AI systems should be given the legal status of persons as a way of countering the problem of accountability when autonomous systems malfunction and harm people.[2] This debate entered mainstream legal discourse with a proposal of the European Parliament of 2017 suggesting the idea of electronic personhood.[3] Nevertheless, the concept is still debatable in the field of jurisprudence and regulatory theory.
This paper suggests that Artificial Intelligence should not be given legal personhood due to its imprudence as well as unfairness.Historically, legal personhood is a legal fiction designed to accomplish certain social goals like commercial facilitation, religious interests conservation, or environmental resource protection.[4] Corporations, idols and rivers have been given legal identity due to the fact that they safeguard identifiable human or ecological interests.[5] Artificial Intelligence, in its turn, does not have any consciousness, moral agency, and intrinsic interests. It is incapable of having intentions, moral responsibility, and independent rights to be accorded legal status.
This paper explores the notion of legal personhood, jurisprudential conditions of identifying non-human beings as legal persons, and the analogy of symbolic personhood in law.[6] The paper will also examine the dangers of AI personhood such as corporate liability caps, lack of responsibility and moral hazards in technology advancement. The paper suggests that the harms caused by AI systems are better regulated by the existing legal doctrines of strict liability, corporate accountability, product liability, and transparency through algorithmic means.[7]
Finally, it is concluded in the paper that the legal personhood of AI would be counterproductive to core foundations of justice by placing the burden off on the human agents who create, implement, and make money on AI technologies. An anthropocentric regulatory system is the most consistent and reasonable model of the regulation of artificial intelligence.[8]
Keywords: Accountability, Artificial Intelligence, Legal Fictions, Legal Personhood, Responsibility.
[1] European Parliament Resolution of 16 Feb. 2017 with recommendations to the Commission on Civil Law Rules on Robotics, 2015/2103(INL).
[2] Simon Chesterman, We, the Robots? Regulating Artificial Intelligence and the Limits of the Law (Cambridge Univ. Press 2021).
[3] Joanna J. Bryson, Mihailis E. Diamantis & Thomas D. Grant, Of, for, and by the People: The Legal Lacuna of Synthetic Persons, 25 Artificial Intelligence & L. 273 (2017).
[4] Andrea Bertolini & Michela Episcopo, The (Un)Accountability of Artificial Intelligence: Why Electronic Personhood Won’t Solve the Problem, 6 Eur. J. Risk Reg. (2022).
[5] Luciano Floridi & Josh Cowls, A Unified Framework of Five Principles for AI in Society, 1 Harv. Data Sci. Rev. (2019).
[6] Rylands v. Fletcher, (1868) LR 3 HL 330 (HL).
[7] Restatement (Second) of Torts § 402A (Am. L. Inst. 1965).
[8] Mohd. Salim v. State of Uttarakhand, W.P. (PIL) No. 126/2014 (Uttarakhand HC 2017).