Gabriel Weil

Scholarship · AI liability and insurance

Gabriel Weil is an assistant professor of law at the University of Houston Law Center and a non-resident senior fellow at the Institute for Law & AI. His research examines how tort liability and insurance could address harms caused by advanced artificial intelligence, especially losses borne by people who did not choose to use the system.

Roles and affiliations

The University of Houston identifies Weil as an assistant professor and describes his work on liability for AI harms. Its faculty biography also identifies him as a co-founder of the Stanford Judicial Institute on AI, an educational initiative for state and federal judges. He previously taught at Touro Law Center and worked on climate-policy issues before concentrating on AI law. LawAI lists him as a non-resident senior fellow; older LawAI publications describe his former Touro affiliation and should be read in their publication-date context.

Contributions and positions

Tort liability for AI harms

In Tort Law as a Tool for Mitigating Catastrophic Risk from Artificial Intelligence (2024), Weil examines whether ordinary negligence and products-liability doctrines can create sufficient incentives to prevent severe AI harms. He proposes considering strict liability for some advanced-AI activity, wider use of liability insurance, and punitive damages calibrated to risks that could exceed a defendant's ability to pay. These are scholarly proposals, not statements of existing general law.

His June 2025 essay The Case for AI Liability argues that liability can give developers and deployers continuing incentives to account for harms to third parties. Weil distinguishes a negligence inquiry into reasonable precautions from strict liability's potential to influence decisions about whether and how to undertake a risky activity. In The Limits of Liability (August 2024), he also identifies constraints, including difficulty collecting for catastrophic losses, underinvestment in shared safety research and cross-border enforcement.

Insurance and legislative testimony

Weil co-authored LawAI's November 2024 report Insuring Emerging Risks From AI. The authors recommend targeted liability reforms, insurance for some AI applications and attention to catastrophic losses that conventional insurance may not absorb. The report presents policy recommendations and market analysis, not a finding that a particular insurance contract covers AI losses.

On February 11, 2025, Weil submitted testimony to the Rhode Island House Judiciary Committee supporting H 5224, a proposed civil cause of action for some injuries involving covered AI models. The introduced bill addressed injuries to non-users under specified conditions and included developer defenses. His testimony argued that the proposal could fill gaps in existing negligence and products-liability rules. The bill text and testimony document a proposed reform and his support for it, not enactment.

Selected works

• Tort Law as a Tool for Mitigating Catastrophic Risk from Artificial Intelligence (2024) — Manuscript and public abstract.
• Insuring Emerging Risks From AI (2024) — Co-authored LawAI report with linked full text.
• The Case for AI Liability (2025) — Authored policy essay.

Coverage

• February 11, 2025 — Rhode Island H 5224 testimony — Official legislative submission supporting a proposed AI-liability cause of action.

Related articles

• Institute for Law & AI
• United States policy on catastrophic AI risk
• Insurance coverage for AI-related losses
• Anat Lior
• People in AI and Law

References

Profile sources last reviewed September 22, 2026. Dated positions and developments are identified in the text.