Artificial Intelligence: Its Legal Accountability On Online Transactions In Malaysia

In recent years, there has been extensive reliance on Artificial Intelligence (AI) in promoting e-commerce. Businesses and commercial ventures find it easier, more profitable, and cost-saving to install and instruct AI to carry out their business and commercial undertakings. However, the law is still relatively new in respect of accountability of AI. To date, most legislations relate to conservative online transactions, and liability is still mostly absorbed by the party that chooses to employ AI in their transactions. The very definition of AI connotes that to a certain extent AI is equipped to function like normal humans. Therefore, this paper aims to examine whether businesses and commercial ventures in e-commerce can exonerate some of their liabilities to AI. This research adopted a doctrinal legal research methodology, supplemented by comparative legal analysis and qualitative review of secondary sources through literature review of the relevant laws and cases to answer the question as to what extent current Malaysian laws provide for AI liability and accountability in online transactions. Findings showed that businesses and commercial ventures in e-commerce cannot put the blame and liabilities on AI since the legal framework on online transactions involving AI raises unresolved questions of accountability, particularly in contract law, consumer law, and data governance, except that the guilt still falls on the operator of AI. This study can aid legislators, policy-makers, businesses, and the courts in making laws and regulations that can address the continuously evolving challenges of AI and its role in developing e-commerce.