Your legal advisor in the age of artificial intelligence

Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology is revolutionizing the way we work, interact, and drive innovation. However, integrating AI into business processes also entails legal challenges and risks, ranging from data protection and confidentiality to fair competition law, intellectual property rights, and the EU's "AI Act". Our law firm is your expert partner in mastering these challenges and harnessing the full potential of AI safely and responsibly.

Our interdisciplinary team is at your service, from analyzing and designing AI projects to as-sessing and managing risks, developing compliance structures, and training your staff. We don't just talk about AI; we also use it ourselves (see our VISCHER Legal Innovation Lab for more information). This allows us to understand the nuances and complexities that come with these technologies, enabling us to better advise you on how to avoid legal pitfalls and ethical challenges and successfully implement your AI strategy.

Learn more about the compliant and ethical use of AI in our blog series (starting January 15, 2024):

• Part 1: AI at work: The three most important points for employees
• Part 2: Popular AI tools: What about data protection?
• Part 3: AI: 11 principles – and an AI policy for employees
• Part 4: How to assess the risks of both small and large AI projects
• Part 5: AI governance in our company – who is responsible?
• Part 6: The flip side of the coin: Where we need to protect AI from attackers
• Part 7: The EU AI Act - what it means in practice for most companies
• Part 8: AI in financial institutions – opportunities and challenges
• Part 9: AI in marketing: 4 unfair competition law pitfalls
• Part 10: Copyright and AI: Responsibility of providers and users
• Part 11: Fair play with AI: How sports organisations may use athlete data
• Part 12: Feeding AI: How to commercialize data sets
• Part 13: AI in Human Resources
• Part 14: Copyright and AI: How to protect yourself in practice
• Part 15: What you should legally consider when retaining AI providers
• Part 16: How companies can ensure transparency for their use of AI
• Part 17: What is inside an AI model and how it works
• Part 18: The most important compliance requirements for AI
• Part 19: Language models with and without personal data
• Part 20: Risk-based approach: Not all AI applications harbour high risks
• Part 21: The right of access to large language models
• Part 22: Guidelines for using artificial intelligence in financial institutions (FINMA) - VISCHER
• Part 23: Switzerland: What to expect in terms of AI regulation
• Part 24: Five trigger questions for more AI compliance
• Part 25: AI Tools – What about data protection?
• Part 26: AI training: How to Handle Copyright, Data Protection And Other Restrictions
• Part 27: How small and medium-sized enterprises can use AI in a compliant manner
• Part 28: When Media Houses and AI Providers clash – the Pitfalls of AI Regulation
• Part 29: The Challenges of Achieving AI User Adoption
• ... to be continued

Additionally, we have developed various tools to assist you, some of which are freely available:

• AI Training Video for Employees (five minutes, featuring our virtual presentator, Diana Perry, also available in German and French further information: Blog 1)
• One-Page AI Directive, including a summary of our "11 Principles" for the legally compliant and ethical application of AI (also available in German, further information: Blog 3)
• GAI-RA, our free tool for assessing risks in generative AI (available in both a standard and a "Light" version for less risky applications, further information: Blog 4, including a tool for assessing whether the EU AI Act applies and a one-page quick guide for GAIRA Light (available in English and German, further information: Blog 4)
• Checklist for AI Projects (based on GAIRA Light, also available in German)
• AI Training for Law Firms and Legal Services
• VGPT – our own in-house AI text generator (Open Source, Excel with macros for Windows) for using OpenAI's GPT API (further information: Blog 2)
• Use of generative KI, data protection guidelines (only in German, a VUD document, written by David Rosenthal)
• AI-Governance chart (further information: Blog 5)
• EU AI Act: Prohibited and Regulated Use Cases (only in English)
• Overview of the AI tools (further information: Blog 2 and Blog 25)
• Checklist on AI for contracts with suppliers & partners (also available in German, further information: Blog 15)
• Retrieval Augmented Generation ( also available in German)
• A sample AI statement ( also available in German, further information: Blog 16)
• Overview of the various case constellations relating to AI and copyright law in practice (only in English, further information: Blog 14)
• The 12 Golden TOMS (only in English)
• Six ways to attack an AI system (only in English, further information: Blog 6)
• Checklist for the 18 key AI compliance questions (also available in German, further information: Blog 18)

Further publications on the topic from our firm include:

• David Rosenthal, Datenschutz und KI: Worauf in der Praxis zu achten ist, in: Jusletter IT, April 22, 2022 (German)
• David Rosenthal, Datenschutz beim Einsatz generativer künstlicher Intelligenz, in: Jusletter, November 6, 2023 (German)
• David Rosenthal, LLM: The Knowledge-Base-Approach ("Retrieval-Augmented Generation") in creating customer specific AI applications, from a presentation held on June 12, 2023 on data protection and AI
• David Rosenthal, Der EU AI Act– Verordnung über künstliche Intelligenz, in: Jusletter 5. August 2024 (German)

If you need assistance with legal and ethical issues in the use of Artificial Intelligence, or if you have ideas that you would like to implement with our help, we are your trusted partner. Do not hesitate to contact us.