LEGAL PERSONHOOD FOR ARTIFICIAL INTELIGENCE: A JURISPRUDENTIAL DILEMMA
AUTHOR – SRISHTI YADAV, STUDENT AT ASIAN LAW COLLEGE
BEST CITATION – SRISHTI YADAV, LEGAL PERSONHOOD FOR ARTIFICIAL INTELIGENCE: A JURISPRUDENTIAL DILEMMA, INDIAN JOURNAL OF LEGAL REVIEW (IJLR), 6 (9) OF 2026, PG. 421-425, APIS – 3920 – 0001 & ISSN – 2583-2344.
ABSTRACT
This article studies about the legal and philosophical challenges of awarding “legal personhood” to the Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems, exploring Indian law jurisprudence. With traditional approach, the legal system was basically divided into two parts, first as “legal objects” and second as “legal subjects” former being passive tools animals and software and later entities like humans and companies, entitled to rights and obligations. Now with time, this division has been broken with the rise of smart, agentic AI machines that are capable of planning, learning and making decision without complete human control. However, there comes a “responsibility gap” when an autonomous machine makes an unpredictable fault that causes financial or physical harm. The traditional rules of defining liability or criteria for negligence fails as no human could foresee the actions of a machine.
This article studies whether AI can be treated as a “juristic person” in the eyes of the law. Unlike rigid western legal systems, Indian jurisprudence has a flexible approach in granting legal status to non-human entities. The Indian courts have recognized Hindu deities as legal persons with some criteria to be fulfilled.
By analysing the classical legal theories with the Indian Statutes like the Indian Contract Act, 1872, the Patent Act, 1970 and the new criminal law Bhartiya Nyaya Sanhita 2023, this article evaluates the possibility of benefit and harm of AI personhood.
Keywords- Artificial intelligence, Legal personhood, Juristic persons