Closing the AI liability gap: AI, safety, and the case for legislative change (June 2026)

Summary

The law has always struggled to keep up with technological change. With AI, the pace of change is so rapid that this gap feels less like a step and more like a widening gulf.  

A recent White Paper, produced through a collaboration between the MPS Foundation, York University’s Centre for Assuring Autonomy, and the Improvement Academy at the Bradford Institute for Health Research, highlights how clinicians could find themselves exposed when their decisions are influenced by AI recommender systems. Such systems analyse patient data and suggest personalised treatment plans, diagnoses or medications. 

There are also concerns about who might be held liable in the event of a claim relating to AI scribes, automated documentation assistants, triage algorithms, and other forms of clinical decision support. These all share a common feature: they shape clinical reasoning, records, and workflows without taking autonomous responsibility for the outcomes. Under the current legislative framework, there is a risk that doctors could be held wholly liable if an AI suggestion turns out to be wrong and they have followed it. That’s because the existing product liability regime was never designed with AI in mind.  

This paper from Medical Protection aims to set out the challenges we expect clinicians will face, and the action policymakers can take now to make sure AI delivers benefits without leaving doctors unfairly exposed.