Inside AI malpractice law: Who’s responsible?

Sara Gerke, associate professor of law at the University of Illinois, discusses how accountability is currently divided among physicians, health systems and artificial intelligence (AI) developers when errors occur in AI-assisted care.

“Right now, liability likely mainly falls on physicians and also hospitals — not necessarily on manufacturers,” she explains.

Through CLASSICA, a Horizon Europe project, Gerke’s team conducted the first empirical legal study of liability using focus groups with 18 U.S. and EU surgeons. The findings were published in Annals of Surgery Open.

Most surgeons agreed that AI is not yet part of the standard of care but expect it will be in the future. “They were very skeptical about holding manufacturers liable unless there was a clear defect,” Gerke says. “But some called for shared accountability if the AI output is followed properly.”

She adds that the challenge ahead is determining how liability should evolve as AI tools become more sophisticated — and whether current frameworks can fairly distribute responsibility across all stakeholders.