AI Legal Watch: October
New State Laws Regulating AI Use for Mental Healthcare
Ariel House
Several states have enacted laws restricting the use of AI in mental healthcare, generally prohibiting AI from independently providing therapy or making clinical decisions without licensed professional oversight. The new requirements reflect growing regulatory attention on AI applications in high-risk healthcare settings and reinforce expectations for human accountability, transparency, and patient protection.
Developments in the Trump Administration's AI Strategy
Coleman Strine
The Trump administration continues to emphasize voluntary industry commitments and reliance on existing legal authorities rather than comprehensive federal AI legislation. Recent developments, including the White House's "Super Intelligence" accord and increased FTC scrutiny of AI companies, suggest that the federal approach to AI oversight and enforcement continues to evolve.
Anthropic Proposes Its Own AI Safety Bill
Ben Bafumi
Anthropic has circulated a draft federal bill that would establish safety, security, testing, and incident-reporting requirements for the most advanced AI models while limiting oversight to the largest AI developers. The proposal reflects growing momentum toward a national AI governance framework and highlights ongoing efforts to balance frontier AI safety concerns with continued innovation.
Are Your Conversations with Claude Discoverable?
Kira Gill
Artificial intelligence ("AI") has become part of the modern patent litigation workflow for many attorneys. It can be used to assist with various tasks such as summarizing technical documents, organizing discovery, identifying prior art, analyzing claim language, assisting in drafting expert reports, identifying prior art, analyzing claim language, assisting in drafting expert reports, finding case law for briefs, and filtering through massive document productions for relevant information and/or document review projects. Many users have chosen their preferred AI platform, becoming familiar with its capabilities, limitations, and how to tailor their prompts to obtain the most useful results. Some of the heavy hitter AI models include "Harvey," Anthropic's "Claude," Google's "Gemini," and of course, OpenAI's "ChatGPT." Many law firms have also partnered with AI providers to develop enterprise platforms that incorporate enhanced security measures, including encryption, contractual confidentiality protections, and restrictions on the use of client data to train AI models, allowing attorneys to use these tools with sensitive or confidential information while reducing the risks associated with public-facing AI platforms.
ABOUT BAKER BOTTS L.L.P.
Baker Botts is an international law firm whose lawyers practice throughout a network of offices around the globe. Based on our experience and knowledge of our clients' industries, we are recognized as a leading firm in the energy, technology and life sciences sectors. Since 1840, we have provided creative and effective legal solutions for our clients while demonstrating an unrelenting commitment to excellence. For more information, please visit bakerbotts.com.
