You will be provided with a reference and some statements. Please determine whether each statement is 'supported', 'unsupported', or 'unknown' with respect to the reference. Please note:
First, assess whether the reference contains any valid content. If the reference contains no valid information, such as a 'page not found' message, then all statements should be considered 'unknown'.
If the reference is valid, for a given statement: if the facts or data it contains can be found entirely or partially within the reference, it is considered 'supported' (data accepts rounding); if all facts and data in the statement cannot be found in the reference, it is considered 'unsupported'.

You should return the result in a JSON list format, where each item in the list contains the statement's index and the judgment result, for example:
[
    {
        "idx": 1,
        "result": "supported"
    },
    {
        "idx": 2,
        "result": "unsupported"
    }
]

Below are the reference and statements:
<reference>
AMERICAN Journal of Public Diplomacy and
International Studies
Volume 4, Issue 01, 2026 ISSN (E):2993-2157

The Ghost in the Machine: A Comparative Critique of AI ‘Legal
Personhood’ and Liability Attribution in Autonomous Vehicle Torts
(EU vs. US)
Kurbanaliyev Sardor Alidjanovich
Tashkent International University, Jurisprudence (Law), 2nd-year student
Abstract: This article critiques the viability of granting legal personhood to Artificial
Intelligence (AI) within the context of SAE Level 4/5 Autonomous Vehicle (AV) liability. By
contrasting the European Union’s 2024 Revised Product Liability Directive—which cements a
strict liability "product" approach following the 2025 withdrawal of the specialized AI Liability
Directive—with the United States’ emerging reliance on mass tort litigation (e.g., the 2025
LoSavio certification), it argues that "electronic personhood" is a legally redundant fiction.
Instead, the article proposes a "functional entity" model that harmonizes the US "enterprise risk"
doctrine with the EU’s "presumption of defectiveness," ensuring victims are compensated
without anthropomorphizing code.

Introduction: The Liability Gap in the Algorithmic Age.
The rapid deployment of SAE Level 4 and Level 5 Autonomous Vehicles (AVs) has precipitated
a crisis in tort law not seen since the industrial revolution introduced the steam engine to
common law courts.[1] As the "dynamic driving task" shifts from carbon to silicon, the
traditional nexus of liability—human negligence—dissolves. When a self-driving vehicle strikes
a pedestrian, the absence of a human tortfeasor creates a "retribution gap,"[2] leaving courts to
decide whether the crash was a failure of product, a failure of oversight, or the act of an
independent legal entity.
This article explores the divergent legal responses to this crisis in the European Union and the
United States. While the EU has moved towards a centralized, legislative framework that
modernizes strict product liability via the Revised Product Liability Directive (2024),[3] the
United States largely relies on a fragmented common law evolution, attempting to shoehorn
algorithmic decision-making into century-old negligence doctrines.
Central to this debate is the provocative, yet legally perilous, concept of "AI Legal Personhood."
Proponents have long argued that granting AI independent legal status—akin to a corporation—
solves the liability gap by creating a distinct entity to be sued.[4] However, following the
European Commission’s withdrawal of the AI Liability Directive in February 2025,[5] the
political appetite for such novelties has collapsed. This article argues that recognizing AI as a
legal person is a "doctrinal escape hatch" that would allow manufacturers to externalize risk.[6]
Through a comparative analysis of the 2025 LoSavio class action in the US and the new EU strict
liability regime, it is demonstrated that a robust "enterprise liability" model is the only
mechanism capable of ensuring equitable victim compensation.

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The European Framework: The Triumph of "Product" over "Person"
The European Union’s approach to AV liability has been defined by a tension between the desire
to foster innovation and the precautionary principle. This tension was resolved in late 2024 and
early 2025 with a decisive pivot away from specialized "AI law" and toward a strengthened
product liability regime.
The 2024 Revised Product Liability Directive (PLD) For decades, the EU relied on Directive
85/374/EEC, which struggled to categorize software as a tangible "product." The Revised
Product Liability Directive (Directive 2024/2853), adopted in late 2024, explicitly closes this
loophole. Article 4 of the new PLD categorizes software, AI systems, and digital services as
"products" subject to strict liability.[7]
Crucially, the new PLD introduces a "rebuttable presumption of defectiveness" (Article 9) and a
"presumption of causality" (Article 10).[8] This is a direct response to the "Black Box" problem,
where a plaintiff cannot explain why a neural network decided to swerve. Under the new regime,
if a claimant faces "excessive difficulties" in proving the technical defect due to the system's
complexity, the burden shifts to the manufacturer to prove the AI acted correctly. This
effectively creates a strict liability standard for AV crashes, treating the AI not as an agent, but as
a dangerous instrument under the manufacturer's control.
The Withdrawal of the AI Liability Directive (AILD) The most significant recent
development was the European Commission’s decision in February 2025 to withdraw the
proposed AI Liability Directive.[9] The AILD had proposed a complex system of fault-based
liability that some scholars argued implicitly treated AI as a quasi-agent. Its withdrawal signals a
legislative consensus: AI is not a special category of actor; it is a product. By scrapping the
AILD, the EU rejected the "electronic personhood" pathway, reinforcing that liability rests solely
with the human or corporate entities (manufacturers, operators) that place the system on the
market.
The United States Framework: Regulation by Litigation
In stark contrast to the EU’s legislative foresight, the United States has regulated AV liability
through the "laboratory of the states" and high-stakes retrospective litigation. The result is a
patchwork where liability depends heavily on jurisdiction and the specific framing of the tort.
The "LoSavio" Precedent and the Fraud Doctrine The certification of the class in LoSavio v.
Tesla (N.D. Cal. Aug. 2025) marked a turning point in US liability theory.[10] Rather than
relying solely on product defect theories, the plaintiffs successfully argued a "fraud-on-themarket" theory regarding the capabilities of "Full Self-Driving" (FSD) systems. The court’s
acceptance of this theory suggests that US courts are bypassing the question of "who drove the
car" (the AI or the human) and focusing on "who sold the dream."
This shifts liability from operational negligence (driving errors) to informational negligence
(marketing errors). If an AI "hallucinates" and causes a crash, the US legal system increasingly
views this not as the AI's fault, but as the manufacturer's fraud for promising capability that did
not exist.
Negligence vs. Strict Liability Outside of fraud claims, US plaintiffs still face the hurdle of the
Risk-Utility Test. In the 2025 Miami verdict, where a jury awarded $243 million against an AV
manufacturer,[11] the plaintiff prevailed not by proving the AI was a "bad driver," but by
proving the human-machine interface (HMI) was defective for failing to keep the human driver
engaged.
This reveals a persistent US adherence to the "Human-in-the-Loop" fallacy. Even in Level 4/5
contexts, US courts seek a human agent—either the remote operator or the distracted
passenger—to assign comparative fault.[12] Unlike the EU’s new PLD, which presumes the
manufacturer is liable for the "product," US law allows manufacturers to argue that the human
user "misused" the AI, a defense that remains a formidable barrier to recovery.

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Comparative Analysis: The Fallacy of AI Personhood
The divergence between the EU and US highlights the redundancy of "AI Legal Personhood."
Theoretical proposals to grant AI personhood usually rest on two pillars: (1) autonomy (the AI
acts independently) and (2) solvability (the AI can pay damages). Both legal systems have now
implicitly rejected these pillars.
The Solvency Problem If an AI is a legal person, it must own assets to be sued.[13] Without a
mandatory insurance scheme where the AI itself is the policyholder—a concept distinct from the
owner's insurance—a judgment against an AI is worthless. The EU’s rejection of the AILD
confirms that the legislator sees no value in creating a "shell entity" (the AI) when the "deep
pockets" (the manufacturer) are already available under the Product Liability Directive.
The "Slavery" Argument Scholars such as Pagallo have drawn parallels between AI and
Roman servi (slaves), who were agents but not persons.[14] However, this analogy fails in the
context of modern corporate law. Granting personhood to AI would effectively allow
corporations to pierce their own corporate veil, shielding the parent company from liability by
offloading it onto an insolvent software entity.
The US "Enterprise Liability" doctrine and the EU’s "Strict Liability" effectively achieve the
same goal without the metaphysical baggage of personhood: they internalize the cost of
accidents into the price of the technology. The 2025 US verdicts demonstrate that juries are
willing to punish corporations for algorithmic failures without needing to pretend the algorithm
is a person.
Conclusion: Toward a Functional Entity Model
The legal developments of 2024-2026 demonstrate that the "Electronic Person" is a dead letter.
The European Union has chosen a path of comprehensive strict liability, treating AI as a highrisk product where the manufacturer bears the burden of the "Black Box." The United States has
stumbled toward a similar outcome through punitive mass torts, punishing manufacturers for
over-promising autonomy.
References:
1.

Ugo Pagallo, The Laws of Robots: Crimes, Contracts, and Torts, 12 Springer Law & Tech.
45, 47 (2013).

2.

Robert Sparrow, Killer Robots and the Concept of War, 24 J. Applied Phil. 62, 67 (2007).

3.

Directive (EU) 2024/2853 of the European Parliament and of the Council on liability for
defective products, 2024 O.J. (L 2853) [hereinafter Revised PLD].

4.

Lawrence B. Solum, Legal Personhood for Artificial Intelligences, 70 N.C. L. Rev. 1231,
1255 (1992).

5.

European Commission, Work Programme 2025: Annex I (Withdrawal of Pending
Proposals), COM(2025) 45 final (Feb. 11, 2025).

6.

Joanna J. Bryson et al., Of, for, and by the people: the legal lacuna of synthetic persons, 25
Artif. Intell. & L. 273 (2017).

7.

Revised PLD, supra note 3, at Art. 4(1).

8.

Id. at Art. 9-10; see also Reed Smith LLP, The New EU Product Liability Directive:
Implications for Software, Nat’l L. Rev. (July 2, 2025).

9.

See European Commission withdraws AI Liability Directive from consideration, IAPP
Daily Dashboard (Feb. 12, 2025) (citing lack of political agreement and industry pressure).

10. LoSavio v. Tesla, Inc., No. 3:22-cv-05240, 2025 WL 3141592 (N.D. Cal. Aug. 18, 2025)
(Order Granting Class Certification).

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11. Estate of Garcia v. Tesla, Inc., Verdict Form, No. 2023-01234-CA (Fla. Cir. Ct. MiamiDade Cnty. Aug. 1, 2025) (Awarding $243 million in compensatory and punitive damages).
12. Mark A. Geistfeld, A Roadmap for Autonomous Vehicle Liability, 105 Mich. L. Rev. 1
(2019).
13. Thomas Burri, Free Movement of Data and the 'Electronic Person', 23 Maastricht J. Eur.
& Comp. L. 13 (2017).
14. Pagallo, supra note 1, at 55.
15. Restatement (Third) of Torts: Products Liability § 2(b) (Am. Law Inst. 1998).
16. Kenneth S. Abraham & Robert L. Rabin, Automated Vehicles and Manufacturer
Responsibility for Accidents: A New Legal Regime for a New Era, 105 Va. L. Rev. 127
(2019).
17. Expert Grp. on Liability & New Tech., Liability for Artificial Intelligence and other
Emerging Digital Technologies, Eur. Comm'n (2019), at 22.

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</reference>

<statements>
1. European Union, Third-Party Victim Recovery Mechanism: Direct recovery via revised Product Liability Directive; features rebuttable presumptions of defect and causation [50].
2. European Union, Manufacturer / Upstream Liability Locus: Producer strictly liable for software defects, over-the-air update failures, and AI classification errors [50].
3. Complementing these technical rules, the European Union updated its civil liability framework through the Revised Product Liability Directive [50].
4. To address the informational imbalance injured plaintiffs face when litigating against manufacturers of complex, black-box artificial intelligence systems, the revised directive introduced two evidentiary presumptions [50].
5. First, courts apply a rebuttable presumption of product defectiveness where a defendant manufacturer fails to comply with judicial evidence disclosure orders or where the plaintiff shows that the system violated applicable safety regulations or malfunctioned under ordinary use [50].
6. Second, the directive establishes a rebuttable presumption of causal connection where a plaintiff proves a product defect and shows that the defect was likely responsible for the resulting harm, addressing the complex task of proving causal chains in self-learning automated driving software [50].
7. Civil tort doctrine should adapt to the technical complexity of automated driving by establishing balanced evidentiary presumptions in products liability actions
</statements>

Begin the assessment now. Output only the JSON list, without any conversational text or explanations.