Fluid Agency in AI Systems: A Case for Functional Equivalence in Copyright, Patent, and Tort

2026-01-06

arXiv.org

AI Summary

This study addresses the legal ambiguities arising from the “fluid agency” exhibited by AI systems, which blurs the boundaries between human and machine contributions in creation, invention, and infringement, thereby creating gaps in the application of existing legal frameworks regarding rights attribution and liability. The paper introduces, for the first time, a systematic conceptualization of “fluid agency” and proposes a “functional equivalence” principle—treating human-AI collaborations as legally equivalent entities when clear attribution is unattainable. By integrating doctrinal legal analysis, institutional design, and AI behavioral modeling, the work constructs a unified normative framework spanning copyright, patent, and tort law. This framework offers a coherent and actionable policy pathway to bridge the institutional fissures in legal applicability precipitated by the advent of AI.

Technology Category

• Philosophy and Ethics of AI: Bias, Fairness & Equity
• Humans and AI: AI for Accessibility
• Multiagent Systems: Agent/AI Theories and Architectures

Application Category

• Responsible Web: Machine-in-the-loop, human agency and autonomy
• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: Fairness and ethical considerations in crowd work and in human-in-the-loop AI systems
• Social Networks and Social Media: Generative AI / large language models and their impact on social systems

Abstract

Modern Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems lack human-like consciousness or culpability, yet they exhibit fluid agency: behavior that is (i) stochastic (probabilistic and path-dependent), (ii) dynamic (co-evolving with user interaction), and (iii) adaptive (able to reorient across contexts). Fluid agency generates valuable outputs but collapses attribution, irreducibly entangling human and machine inputs. This fundamental unmappability fractures doctrines that assume traceable provenance--authorship, inventorship, and liability--yielding ownership gaps and moral"crumple zones."This Article argues that only functional equivalence stabilizes doctrine. Where provenance is indeterminate, legal frameworks must treat human and AI contributions as equivalent for allocating rights and responsibility--not as a claim of moral or economic parity but as a pragmatic default. This principle stabilizes doctrine across domains, offering administrable rules: in copyright, vesting ownership in human orchestrators without parsing inseparable contributions; in patent, tying inventor-of-record status to human orchestration and reduction to practice, even when AI supplies the pivotal insight; and in tort, replacing intractable causation inquiries with enterprise-level and sector-specific strict or no-fault schemes. The contribution is both descriptive and normative: fluid agency explains why origin-based tests fail, while functional equivalence supplies an outcome-focused framework to allocate rights and responsibility when attribution collapses.

Problem

• fluid agency
• attribution collapse
• functional equivalence
• AI legal liability
• ownership gaps

Innovation

• fluid agency
• functional equivalence
• AI attribution
• legal doctrine
• human-AI collaboration