Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) technologies continue to extend their reach into our daily lives. Pierce Atwood’s lawyers have the expertise and experience to assist clients as these growing technologies affect their businesses.

Business Uses of AI

Our Business, Privacy and Technology Transactions teams routinely advise clients in connection with transactional matters involving artificial intelligence technologies, including machine learning. As AI capabilities have developed and expanded in recent years and interest in these technologies has grown, an increasing number of software and technology service providers are incorporating AI into their solutions. Further, the convergence of big data and AI presents new opportunities and challenges for owners and custodians of large data sets.

Our lawyers work with clients in a variety of contexts to navigate the promise and peril associated with these new technologies. For example:

  • Providing compliance advice relating to use of generative AI
  • Advising on the copyright risks and implications of using generative AI in marketing communications and social media posts
  • Drafting generative AI Acceptable Use Policies
  • On behalf of client with large health care claims data set, drafting and negotiating data use agreements for contribution of data to machine learning models
  • Collaborating with a major North American financial services company in developing contracting standards governing artificial intelligence and model risk, including standards relating to bias and fairness, explainability, and model validation
  • Negotiating Software-as-a-Service agreements for natural language processing AI solutions, on behalf of both customers and suppliers of those solutions
  • Handling Platform-as-a-Service transactions enabling no-code and low-code application development
  • Negotiating master services agreement for industry leading AI data analytics tools for customer relationship management
  • Assisting a banking client with analysis of privacy-related risks of third-party vendor retention and use of data for model training purposes

AI and Machine Learning Patents

Our Patent law group regularly works with engineers and research scientists on patent applications dealing with the training, design, and architecture of machine learning models as well as customized hardware to operate them and their various runtime/inference applications. With the increased use and recent developments in generative AI systems, our team has worked on numerous patent applications involving the use of and the technology related to various types of generative models. In addition to patenting new techniques for general AI and machine learning approaches and improvements, our team has also assisted clients with many patents in various areas including:

  • Audio processing, such as speech recognition, natural language processing, acoustic event detection, emotion recognition, dialog management, and synthesized speech generation
  • Image processing, including user recognition, object detection, video summarization, and avatar configuration
  • Large language models (LLMs), text-to-text models, and other types of generative models, including new applications and uses, technology that operates on the model inputs and/or outputs, fine-tuning and testing techniques, and knowledge integration
  • Digital workspace management, such as intelligent workspace optimization, virtual application and desktop delivery, network security analytics, content collaboration, and endpoint management
  • Medical technologies and biotechnology, including automated movement and activity detection for applications such as phenotype and genotype analyses and development of therapeutics and diagnostic tools
  • Business operations, including energy management and digital security