Digital Assistants, Consumers and Technological Governance

This event is hosted by Edinburgh Centre for Commercial Law

About the event
With the excitement over recent advance in Artificial Intelligence technologies, particularly Large Language Models, a long-running topic in contract law has gained renewed prominence: the digital automation of the contracting process. There is much talk around AI agents (or custobots, or digital assistants etc) as the technological vehicle for contract automation, both in commercial and consumer situations. In the consumer context, the idea of a digital assistant to automate routine purchases such as weekly grocery orders, has been much discussed. All of this raises questions as to whether Contract Law is capable of encompassing, or adapting to, automated contracting, or whether there will be a need for reform to accommodate automation. For commercial contracts, the recently adopted Model Law on Automated Contracting seeks to do no more than extend the reach of Contract Law to automated contracts. In contrast, the European Law Institute’s Guiding Principles and Model Rules on Digital Assistants for Consumer Contracts (DACC) focus specifically on automating consumer contracts, and offers a detailed set of innovative model rules that combine private law rules with specific technological requirements (design duties) for digital assistants.

In this seminar, Christian Twigg-Flesner (who was the lead co-reporter for the DACC), will give an overview of the DACC and explore some of its core features. In particular, the design requirements of the DACC illustrate how technology is not merely something “to be regulated”, but that technology itself can become part of the regulatory toolbox for consumer contracts. Instead of accepting that technology will invariably restrict consumer autonomy in the way Brownsword’s conception of “technological management” suggests, it can also be used as a means of enhancing autonomy, or empowering consumers, by using it as vehicle for implementing specific policy objectives.

About the speaker
Christian Twigg-Flesner joined Warwick Law School in September 2017. He is Professor of Contract and Consumer Law.

He read law at the University of Sheffield (LLB in 1997 and PhD in 2002). He started his full-time academic career at Nottingham Trent University (1999-2002) before returning to Sheffield as Lecturer (2002-4). He joined the University of Hull in 2004 as Lecturer and was Professor of Commercial Law there from 2010 to 2017 and Head of the Law School from 2012-2014.

He is a Fellow of the European Law Institute and served on its Council from 2019 to 2023. He was an Academic Fellow of the Inner Temple from 2011-2014, and Senior International Fellow at the University of Bayreuth from 2016-2018.

Professor Christian Twigg-Flesner's research interests are broadly in the fields of Contract Law, Consumer Law, and Commercial Law. This includes domestic aspects (English Contract Law, UK Consumer Law, and transactional aspects of Commercial Law), European aspects (especially EU and comparative Consumer Law), and international/transnational dimensions (both Transnational Commercial Law and International Consumer Law).

The focus of his current research is the impact of digitalisation on these fields. This includes specific topics (e.g., automation of transactions through algorithms and Artificial Intelligence; 3D-printing; online platforms; or data transactions) and overarching themes (analytical methodology for law and technological change; legal disruption; shifts in the role of contracts from transactions to networks and governance systems).

His most recent books are the co-edited (with James Devenney) Disruption, Innovation and Re-alignment in UK Consumer Law and PolicyLink opens in a new window (Hart, 2026), Foundations of International Commercial LawLink opens in a new window (Routledge, 2021) and the co-edited (with Hans Micklitz) The Transformation of Consumer Law and Policy in Europe Link opens in a new window(Hart, 2023). He has also published widely on European Consumer and Contract law, including Rethinking EU Consumer LawLink opens in a new window (with Geraint Howells and Thomas Wilhelmsson) and The Europeanisation of Contract LawLink opens in a new window (2nd ed, 2013), and the edited Research Handbook on EU Consumer and Contract Law (Elgar, 2016).

Image credit: Freepik

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