15 October 2026, NEW YORK, Oct 15 (PRNewswire) — Global consulting firm J.S. Held says artificial intelligence (AI) litigation is increasingly focusing on how systems behave after deployment, beyond disputes over copyright and training data.
In its third-quarter 2026 AI Disputes Monitor update, the company reported adding 42 cases, bringing its tracked dataset to 468. This includes 115 actions filed in 2026 as of Sept 30.
While copyright and training-data disputes remain the largest individual category, new cases increasingly examine AI-generated outputs, product safety measures, automated decisions, corporate disclosures and board oversight.
James E. Malackowski, J.S. Held’s chief intellectual property officer and Ocean Tomo co-founder, said litigation was expanding towards the consequences of deploying AI in business, consumer and government settings.
He said disputes increasingly require evidence showing how systems operated, what safeguards were implemented, what companies disclosed about their capabilities and how alleged misconduct affected economic value.
According to J.S. Held, this shift increases the need for coordinated technical, financial and governance investigations. Relevant evidence may include system logs, model versions, testing records, data sources, human-review procedures and documentation of business decisions.
The report also identifies two emerging areas of AI-related disclosure risk. The first involves allegations that companies exaggerated their AI capabilities or commercial benefits, commonly known as AI washing.
The second concerns claims that companies failed to adequately disclose how AI could disrupt their existing products, pricing models, customer behaviour or growth prospects.
J. Scott Womack, senior director in J.S. Held’s Office of the Chief Intellectual Property Officer, said organisations must be able to reconstruct how their AI systems operated and demonstrate that appropriate controls were functioning.
He added that policies alone may not be sufficient, with testing records, monitoring procedures, escalation processes and evidence of meaningful human oversight potentially becoming important in legal disputes.
J.S. Held said its AI Disputes Monitor tracks litigation across technologies, market segments, jurisdictions and use cases to help legal teams, insurers and risk professionals identify emerging trends and assess potential exposure.
The company provides technical investigation, digital forensics, economic damages assessment, intellectual property valuation and governance analysis to support clients involved in complex disputes.
-PR Newawire
