With artificial intelligence being described in terms both promising and perilous, UCLA School of Law is helping to answer a foundational question: What tools do legal systems offer as the technology rapidly reshapes society, and what do our answers reveal about law on the books and in practice?

At the law school, the Institute for Technology, Law and Policy (ITLP) is a main driver of the community-wide effort to come up with actionable answers. A joint endeavor with the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering, ITLP is an active hub of leading scholars who research the rapid growth of AI and related technologies, considering the impacts of the technology on labor, rights, and accountability in the legal space and beyond. Notably, its Information Policy Lab is a practicum-style course in which researchers and students are wrestling with the multiple ramifications of AI.

“It’s a great example of how students are engaged in real-world problems at the intersection of areas of law that are still evolving,” says Julia Powles, ITLP’s executive director and a professor of practice. Powles arrived at UCLA Law in 2025, after two decades studying the legal and societal implications of emerging technologies. Today, she leads research streams with cross-campus collaborators, students, policymakers, and impacted communities on topics ranging from young people’s online safety and privacy to data rights in the worlds of professional sport and Hollywood. “Our scholarship is really pushing the boundaries of where emerging issues can and should be resolved,” she says.

Establishing a hub for technology, performance, and AI law in Los Angeles

Few places are better positioned than UCLA Law to examine the melding of technology and human creativity. “UCLA Law has one of the best concentrations of experts around AI law and policy issues in the country and internationally,” Powles says. Firmly rooted in Los Angeles, the entertainment capital of the world and a global technology and culture hub, UCLA Law is primed to be a key forum for debates over AI-generated voices, synthetic performers, digital replicas, and deepfakes.

The work that students do in the Information Policy Lab illustrates how the law school has taken up the reins. Last spring, under the guidance of Powles and leading tech lawyer Melodi Dincer, students in the lab tackled one of the fastest-moving legal frontiers: digital replicas. With only a few seconds of audio or video, AI systems can replicate someone’s voice and likeness, and images can be manipulated into convincing deepfakes. This is all done with off-the-shelf software, raising concerns among professional performers that their likenesses – and livelihoods – are being appropriated by machines. At the same time, these technologies are profoundly accelerating our exposure to scams, identity theft, image-based abuse, and other harms.

“We looked at how this impacts everyone from schoolkids to public figures, particularly women and girls who are routinely subject to degrading, non-consensual image-based abuse,” Powles says. “The big question is: Do you and your loved ones have adequate legal protections over unauthorized digital representations of yourself? And even if you do, are these effective in practice?”

Through ITLP’s collaboration with organizations including the Consumer Federation of America, Tech Justice Law, the Center for Humane Technology, and the National Association of Voice Actors, students researched high-stakes questions at the crossroads of privacy law, intellectual property, labor rights, and emerging technology regulation. These are exactly the kinds of questions that the UCLA Law administration believes future lawyers must be prepared to answer.

Some legal educators have responded by focusing on teaching students how to use AI tools, especially as law firms have increasingly adopted them. But Powles takes it a step further. “We’re developing critical faculties in engaging with what it means to practice law, to understand law, and then to understand how technical tools and ideologies interact with law and legal practice,” she says.

Artificial intelligence, for example, can summarize documents, draft legal arguments, and search case law at remarkable speed. But it also produces false information, known as hallucinations, such as fabricated citations. For Powles, the real question is whether legal professionals will become mere fact-checkers for algorithms, or whether they will continue exercising independent judgment in ways that secure justice in a world increasingly mediated by machines.

Legal questions surrounding artificial intelligence aren’t solely about innovation, Powles adds. They present significant challenges for labor rights, privacy, intellectual property, surveillance, environmental sustainability, and the future of professional work itself. “It feels like a rollercoaster, where the profession and the conversation are at,” she says. “We’re entering a more thoughtful phase. The debate now is, Does AI promote a fundamental transformation of what it is to be a lawyer? And, at its best, does it help us address areas where we know law and legal practice already fall short.”

Building an AI-forward legal education and research system

This ambitious initiative has sent UCLA Law scholars and students branching out in other stimulating and fruitful directions.

An upcoming faculty retreat will examine AI’s impact on legal education and legal practice. The law school sees the issue clearly, not as a temporary challenge but as a defining question for the profession’s future, says Mark McKenna, a professor of law and faculty co-director of ITLP. He is looking forward to the summit and expects a vigorous discussion.

“The work that we do at the institute – and elsewhere at the law school – is very AI forward,” says McKenna, who recently completed an extended run as UCLA Law’s vice dean of faculty and intellectual life. “That is to say, we have a lot of intellectual resources at UCLA Law who are keenly interested in, and very focused on, all of the substantive questions related to AI.”

Other examples abound. The law library has been particularly proactive. UCLA Law was among the first law schools to establish relationships with Harvey and Legora, leading AI platforms designed specifically for legal work. Through training programs and workshops with UCLA Law experts – including reference librarian Eli Edwards, a legal technology specialist and editor of the popular “Lawyer Ex Machina” newsletter, and Alex Alben, a former tech executive and chief privacy officer of Washington State – students are learning how to engage with generative AI tools effectively and ethically.

At the same time, the Ziffren Institute for Media, Entertainment, Technology, and Sports Law offers courses that are taught by working industry professionals and regularly touch on the impact of AI in the creative space, including Entertainment Guilds and Television Special Issues: SVOD/AVOD Platforms. And legal writing instructors have also played a central role, introducing AI within a structured framework that emphasizes critical evaluation rather than dependence.

Together, these efforts reflect a broader institutional philosophy, McKenna says: embrace the technology without allowing it to replace the intellectual foundations of legal education.

ITLP reflects this broader strategy, and it underscores how the law school has been committed to scholarship in this space since well before AI was making daily headlines. Founded in 2020, the institute was designed to bridge disciplines that have traditionally operated independently. That interdisciplinary structure has become increasingly valuable as AI’s impact expands beyond any single field. Environmental law experts are examining the massive energy demands of AI systems. Public law scholars are studying the use of algorithms in enforcement and decision-making. Civil liberties advocates are scrutinizing surveillance technologies, bringing this work into cross-disciplinary conversations.

“The fact that everything is on the table here in California makes it a really stimulating environment,” Powles says.

Challenging assumptions around AI regulation

Perhaps her most provocative argument is that society has largely accepted a false premise about artificial intelligence. The common narrative suggests that technology inevitably races ahead while policymakers struggle to catch up. But she notes that many safeguards simply have never been implemented. Consumers expect extensive oversight for pharmaceuticals, automobiles, food production, and countless other industries. Yet AI systems have entered schools, workplaces, and public life with remarkably little scrutiny.

Powles refers to a comparison made by UNESCO’s education leadership. Introducing a textbook into a school often requires multiple levels of review and approval, but deploying ChatGPT to millions of students worldwide required virtually none. The contrast reveals what she sees as a deep regulatory gap. “We expect the same kinds of checks and balances,” she says. “We just don’t seem to be putting them into practice yet.”

As the institute evolves, Powles envisions research organized around several major challenges. One focuses on resilience in information policy, including privacy, intellectual property, internet governance, and cybersecurity. Another examines technical and legal responses to the growing tension between AI’s enormous energy demands and environmental realities. A third explores how communities can set the direction for urban environments being rapidly reconfigured by autonomous vehicles, delivery robots, drones, data centers, and digital infrastructure.

Maybe most important is the effort to reconcile what often appear to be competing interests: innovation and creativity, economic growth and labor protections, technological advancement and human dignity. That balancing act may ultimately define the next generation of AI regulation. For Powles, the goal is not to slow innovation, nor is it to embrace every new technological development uncritically.

McKenna remembers his own law school days, when computerized legal research was still a novelty. Computer-based legal research programs services such as Westlaw were available only through dedicated terminals housed in libraries. Lawyers trained on books, and some clients resisted paying for electronic research altogether. Yet within a decade, the profession had largely reversed course.

Nevertheless, McKenna emphasizes, “a database is not capable of framing issues in the same way that a human being can. In the legal market, what people are paying for is your judgment.”