Author: Alex Heshmaty

Alex Heshmaty is technology editor for the Newsletter. He runs Legal Words, a legal copywriting agency based in the Silicon Gorge. Email alex@legalwords.co.uk.

The Online Safety Act 2023: a primer

After a long time in the making, the Online Safety Act finally received Royal Assent on 26 October 2023. According to the accompanying Government press release, the Act “places legal responsibility on tech companies to prevent and rapidly remove illegal content” and aims “to stop children seeing material that is harmful to them”. So what […]

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Generative AI and access to justice

It’s been almost a year since ChatGPT was released to the public back in November 2022. Although much has been written about the impact of generative AI on the legal sector as a whole, there has been less focus on its potential to improve access to justice for the ordinary citizen who cannot afford a […]

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Global AI regulation

In the wake of an avalanche of publicity following the hugely successful roll-out of ChatGPT, governments around the world have been waking up to the transformative effects of generative AI tools upon their societies, economies and legal systems. Stark warnings from leading industry figures such as Sam Altman, Elon Musk and Geoffrey Hinton, about the […]

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ChatGPT: more questions

Following his recent article on ChatGPT’s implications for the legal world, Alex Heshmaty garners answers to further questions from Dr Ilia Kolochenko. Who owns the copyright of ChatGPT responses? This now-rapidly evolving question is largely unsettled among jurisdictions, in most cases probably no-one. Is it possible for original copyright holders to prevent ChatGPT (or Bard) […]

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Harnessing innovative technologies to meet future challenges

A new joint report entitled A New National Purpose, which explores how the UK can harness innovative technologies to meet future challenges, has recently been published by Tony Blair and William Hague. The “cross-party” report argues that we are currently undergoing a new form of Industrial Revolution “as developments in artificial intelligence (AI), biotech, climate […]

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ChatGPT: implications for the legal world

Chatbots have been around since the 1960s and coders have been trying to pass the Turing test ever since, creating increasingly sophisticated iterations of natural language processing (NLP) software. A recent episode, where a Google engineer was sacked for claiming that the search engine’s chatbot generator software known as LaMDA was sentient, perhaps demonstrates the […]

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The Metaverse: laws of the second coming

Back in 2003, when Facebook was just an experiment for Mark Zuckerberg to improve his luck with dating at Harvard, an online game called Second Life was launched by Linden Lab. It created a virtual world (also known as a metaverse) where its users could spend time in the guise of their avatars, talking to […]

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Reforming data protection

Following a consultation on reforming the UK’s data protection laws – partly designed to “provide an opportunity for the UK to reshape its approach to regulation” post-Brexit – the government has published the Data Protection and Digital Information Bill (previously dubbed the “Data Reform Bill”). The forthcoming legislation follows several years of upheaval to the […]

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AI legal technology: fact vs fiction

Artificial intelligence (AI) is a term which is routinely bandied about in discussions about legal technology. Companies selling software to the legal sector almost ubiquitously proclaim that their products are “powered with AI” in their marketing literature. But is this apparent meteoric rise of AI within legal tech of any real consequence, or is it […]

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Clamping down on fake online reviews

The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) recently announced that it will be receiving additional enforcement powers in preparation for new laws seeking to stamp out fake online reviews. The proposals, contained in a government consultation Reforming competition and consumer policy, would essentially make it illegal to: commission someone to write or submit a fake review; […]

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Restricting the internet

The invasion of Ukraine by Russia, and the subsequent imposition of a wide array of sanctions by Western governments and companies, has raised the prospect of Russia essentially unplugging itself from the global internet. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has refused calls to revoke Russia’s top-level domains and Secure Sockets Layer […]

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The Law Commission report on automated vehicles

The recently published joint report of the Law Commission of England and Wales and the Scottish Law Commission addresses some of the legal questions concerning the introduction of driverless cars onto British roads. The report proposes an “Automated Vehicles Act” to ensure there are adequate regulations governing such vehicles, meaning those “capable of driving themselves […]

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