It seems like every day there is a new opportunity to use AI in your work and free time—even when you do not need or want it. A few recent examples from my own desk (and likely yours) include Google search, which now has a new "AI Overview" feature that seems to pop up with every search; Microsoft Co-Pilot, which my Office 365 software suggests I use every time I log on; Adobe, with its "AI Assistant" (still figuring out what its purpose is—and if I can disable it!) and its own generative AI (GenAI) tool (which can be shut off); Zoom "AI Companion"—its proprietary competitor to Otter.ai; and Facebook with its new "Ask Meta AI anything" (haven't been able to shut that off either). If you use a computer—or phone (iPhone, I'm looking at you!) —for anything, you can no longer "ignore" AI and assume it does not apply to you. In short, AI is here, and it is here to stay. And, of course, these tools are evolving at a rapid pace, presenting new opportunities for use and improving their utility on a nearly daily basis.

Despite their ubiquity and advertised benefits, as all lawyers should know by now, these tools also present tremendous risks. Among the most paramount concerns are questions about AI's validity and reliability (or more precisely, invalidity and unreliability—e.g., "hallucinations"), as well as security (i.e., implicating both privacy and trade secret law). These tools also present many other opportunities to run afoul (or at least run into gray areas) of various areas of the law such as discrimination occasioned by bias (allegedly, possibly accidentally) built into the AI tools. Straddling the realms of IP, privacy, and even national security there are, of course, "deepfakes" raising, among other things, name, image and likeness implications. And last, but not least, there are the much-discussed potential copyright infringement issues arising from the use of materials subject to copyright in training materials for generative AI tools, and as well as the continuing uncertainty around the extent to which AI-assisted inventions or creations can be protected via patent or copyright.