Liability for autonomous AI harms is unresolved and no reform vehicle exists

The Law Commission's discussion paper of 31 July 2025 identifies genuine liability gaps, scenarios where no natural or legal person is liable for harm caused by adaptive autonomous systems, along with causation and opacity problems, and it is a scoping paper with no commissioned reform project behind it. The UK Jurisdiction Taskforce consulted on a draft legal statement on AI liability under English private law in January 2026, which can clarify but not change the law. AISI meanwhile finds agent task-complexity doubling roughly every seven to eight months, so agentic deployment accelerates ahead of any framework, and insurers cannot price the risk.

Unclear liability chills legitimate deployment, because buyers cannot allocate risk, and under-protects victims, who face harms with no defendant. As agents transact, hire and advise autonomously, the first major uncompensated AI harm will force rushed legislation, the worst way to make private law.

Commission a full Law Commission reform project with a reporting deadline, leading to an AI Liability Act: attribution rules for agentic systems, strict-liability channels for defined high-risk deployments, and mandatory insurance for operators, with interim statutory guidance for courts building on the taskforce statement.

// State-led: Instrument: commissioned Law Commission project leading to an AI Liability Act.

Autonomous systems can already cause harm no one is liable for, and the fix needs a multi-year Law Commission project not yet commissioned.