00:00A robot gropes a teenager. Who ends up in court? The robot, its owner, or the company that built it?
00:06It's honestly just really, really difficult to regulate these new phenomena with the legal concepts we've had up to now.
00:14Quick recap. In Germany, a robot allegedly harassed a 16-year-old girl sexually on a public street.
00:21Its teenage owner is a streamer. So far, he has not been charged, but is considered a suspect.
00:27Police are investigating. You can't put a machine on trial. So who is responsible?
00:32Law professor Susanna Beck says it depends on how much control the human has.
00:38Say the robot had been remote-controlled, then obviously the person actually controlling it is responsible.
00:47But if the robot has artificial intelligence that changes things, then it gets more complicated.
00:54In principle, European law holds whoever committed the offense libel.
00:58But with autonomous systems, proving that is the hard part.
01:03With a highly autonomous AI, you can't predict in advance how it might behave in certain situations.
01:09And afterwards, it's really hard to prove what actually went wrong.
01:12That's the core problem.
01:15Germany and the EU are updating the rules.
01:18Germany's parliament has just passed a law that brings software and AI under product liability.
01:23But the law is still catching up.
01:25Beck says a conviction in a case like this could matter beyond the courtroom.
01:30Tools like robots create distance between perpetrator and victim.
01:33And that can make people forget that there's a real person on the other end.
01:38This isn't a prank and it's really not funny.
01:41It has a serious impact on the person being harmed.
