The responsibilitiesand liability of the persons and organisations involved in the development of AI systems are not clearly identified. The assignment of liability will need government to mo e from a risk-based to a responsibility-based system. One possible approach would be to establish a pan-EU compensation fund for damages caused by digital technologies and AI, financed by the industry and insurance companies.

This chapter examines diverse aspects of new technologies that are disrupting traditional consumer protection. These include phenomena such as consumer profiling or commercialization of data. It can be concluded that artificial intelligence represents a particular challenge for consumer law and policy. Consumer law should be technologically neutral. Irrespective of the technology deployed, the level of consumer protection needs to be always maintained. However, consumer law requirements must never be seen as obstacles to the innovation and the development of new technologies; and establishing the right balance between these two values remains a particular challenge.

The chapter addresses the notion of psychological harm inflicted upon consumers by AI systems. It ponders what phenomena could be considered psychological harm, analyzes how AI systems could be causing them, and provides an overview of the legal strategies for combating them. It demonstrates that the risk posed to consumers’ mental health by AI systems is real and should be addressed, yet the approach taken by the EU in its AIA Proposal is suboptimal.

The purpose of this chapter is to determine how the emergence of digtal delgates would affect the process of contract conclusion and how consumer law might need to be supplemented to strike an appropriate balance between utilising the potential for automation, where desired, with the ability of consumers to remain in control.

This chapter identifies three shortcomings in our preparedness for the governance of future worlds of consumers and AI. If our governance is to be smart, there must first be a systematic gathering of regulatory intelligence (to understand what does and does not work). AI givernance will require new institutions that are geared for the kind of conversations that humans will need to have in the future to adjust to a radically different approach to governance

This chapter argues that the influences on consumer choice should be revisited because the digital environment and the use of AI increase the urgency of having a clear criterion with which to distinguish permitted influences from prohibited ones. The current emphasis on either rational consumers or behaviourally influenced consumers operates with an ideal of unencumbered choice which has no place in reality and overlooks the fact that the law allows many subtle or not-so-subtle attempts to influence the actual behaviour of consumers. To effectively stand up to the force of AI-driven sales techniques, it may be necessary to update the existing framework of consumer protection.

This chapter examines the effects that legally-oriented AI developments will have on consumer protection and to consumers’ need for legal advice and representation. The chapter provides a brief survey of the many possible ways in which AI may influence consumers’ legal needs. It provides comparative analysis of the benefits and risks of the use of AI in the legal sphere, discusses the state of regulation in this area and argues in favor of a new regulatory framework.

In this chapter, we are interested in how AI may enhance our well-being – or do the opposite. A defintion of well-being and promotion of core vlaues will be discussed. It will then survey AI technologies and assess whether they enhance or diminish human well-being, using the different meanings of well-being

This Chapter will examine whether the Digital Content Directive (DCD) can sufficiently protect the consumer who concludes contracts through software on AI-driven online platforms (without being directly involved in the contractual process) against certain of the existing risks. More specifically, due to a technical error or some other factor, such contracts may be mistaken or unintended by the human consumer. Moreover, the consumer may end up dealing with an unreliable, fraudulent or even fictitious trader suffering loss as a result. The question arises as to whether the consumer will have a sufficient remedy in these cases, namely an available route to compensation. In this respect, the Digital Content Directive merits examination with the aim of ascertaining whether it responds to this need of the consumers who contract on AI-driven platforms. The main questions in this context will be whether such platforms qualify as ‘digital services’ within the meaning of said Directive and if yes, whether the provisions of the measure are suitably adjusted to the need of the substituted consumer for an available route to compensation in these cases. These questions may also pinpoint to a possible approach towards the liability of marketplaces for the non-conformity of goods and services offered by third party sellers through their systems. As it will be shown, though the DCD does contain tools that could prove useful to consumers in their attempt to claim and receive compensation, its application is not without problems that may prevent this result. Other measures, specifically the Digital Services Act (DSA) and the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive (UCPD) may offer some help, where the DCD could not do much.

AI-enhanced smart contracts exhibit a high degree of autonomy in their ability to create and execute transactions between and among humans and machines. AI should allow a broader use of of marts contracts in consumer transactions by allowing businesses to satisfy consumer protection law through the coding of smart contracts. AI should be used to advance the principles of fairness and economic efficiency in the drafting and enforcement of smart consumer contracts.

Society needs to influence and mould our expectations so AI is used for the collective good. we should be reluctant to throw away hard (and recently) won consumer rights and values on the altar of technological developments.

The application of AI in judicial decision-making has the potential for both courts and people seeking justice in consumer law contexts. This is especially true for AI assistant systems that help judges by pre-evaluating individual cases. Currently, the application of a human-out-of-the-loop robojudge is unrealistic in Europe as its use would not only be in conflict of fundamental rights enshrined in the ECHR