The Liability Transfer
Published July 2026
Abstract
This paper examines the public contracts for seven enterprise AI services. Across all seven vendors, the terms make the customer responsible for the AI output. Elsewhere, these same contracts disclose that the output is affected by vendor controls such as filters, system instructions, safety features, retrieval rules, data masking, or classifiers. However, the clauses assigning user responsibility completely ignore these controls.
Suggested citation
Foster-Fletcher, R. (2026). The Liability Transfer: How enterprise artificial intelligence terms assign responsibility in one place and describe controls elsewhere. MKAI Working Paper.
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PDF size: 185 KB
Record metadata
- Type
- Working paper
- Theme
- Responsibility and controls in enterprise AI contracts
- Status
- Published working paper
Methods
- Contract reading
- Three-question coding scheme
- Vendor comparison
Keywords
liabilitycontractsenterprise AI