Tech & Sourcing @ Morgan Lewis

It is no secret that usage of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies continues to expand at a rapid pace. In fact, Flexera’s 2023 Tech Spend Pulse, which is based on a survey of 506 information technology executives across the world, found that investments in AI technologies are surging to a 68% planned increase in use. That figure was the highest of all technologies in the survey.

The European Council adopted the EU Data Act (the Act) on November 27, 2023, representing a major regulatory shift in cloud services and data processing. The Act’s objectives include ensuring fairness in the allocation of value from data among actors in the digital environment and making data more accessible to all in order to open opportunities for data-driven innovation.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has been rapidly transforming industries and reshaping our daily lives by ushering in unprecedented opportunities for automation—which naturally has come with some challenges. While AI’s potential is immense, the potential ethical, security, and compliance implications should be carefully examined.

It should be no surprise to readers of this blog that questions about artificial intelligence (AI) have been the hot topic for the past six months. We have previously written posts related to AI contracting pointers, updates from the US Copyright Office and the UK government, and transatlantic developments, as well as copyright risks. This month, we are going to continue the trend and raise some additional issues related to AI that are relevant to our tech and sourcing followers.

In an age marked by remarkable advancements in artificial intelligence (AI), the question of how to effectively govern this rapidly evolving technology has become increasingly pressing. On August 31, 2023, a significant milestone was achieved with the publication of the Governance of Artificial Intelligence: Interim Report by the Science, Innovation and Technology Committee of the UK government (the Interim Report).

Morgan Lewis is hosting our annual Tech & Sourcing Summit in New York on Wednesday, October 25. The summit will include a full day of sessions starting in the morning with breakfast, followed by a networking lunch.

While the regulatory landscape around artificial intelligence (AI) continues to evolve, navigating contractual arrangements and apportioning risk for the use of AI may seem like stepping into the unknown. In this blog post, we consider how a few familiar concepts within commercial contracts may be applied to the provision and use of AI tools as part of services.

A recently released Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) Market report indicates significant continued growth in the BPO sector over the next decade. The results of the study on which the report is based show an expected growth from the 2022 market of $245.9 billion to $544.8 billion in 2032, an 8.5% compound annual growth rate (CAGR).

As noted in our recent blog posts, The Rise of Next-Gen Business Process Outsourcing and Key Contracting Issues to Consider, the core premise of next-gen business process outsourcing (BPO) includes (1) the leveraging of automation, bots, performance tools, and other technology to transform and optimize workflows and business processes and (2) the implementation of solutions to collect and analyze data to improve user experiences and business outcomes. Next-gen BPO drives the development and implementation of transformative technology and the generation of critical business data. As such, the identification of key intellectual property (IP) and the allocation of IP use and ownership rights invariably becomes a gating issue in contract structuring and negotiations.

Our recent blog post, The Rise of Next-Gen Business Process Outsourcing, highlighted the importance of understanding the exciting opportunities and the challenges of next-gen business process outsourcing (BPO) in order to effectively negotiate contract provisions that maximize the benefits of next-gen BPO and minimize the risks. In this blog, we take a look at a few key issues to consider when developing and negotiating a next-gen BPO contract.