Digital Monsters: Reconciling AI Narratives as Investigations of Legal Personhood for Artificial Intelligence

Cultural legal investigations of the nexus between law, culture and society are crucial for developing our understanding of how the relationships between humans and artificially intelligent entities (AIE) will evolve along with the technology itself. However, narratives of artificial intelligence (AI) have been much debated as a source of investigation for the functioning of human–AI relationships within law and society, with some scholars arguing that these texts are essential and others maintaining that AI narratives are illusory as to the practical operation of AI. This article resolves the discrepancies between these seemingly opposing viewpoints. A cultural legal reading of the updated anime series Digimon Adventure (2020) enables a reconciliation of the use of AI narratives as a method of scholarly interpellation of human–AI interactions. Utilising the theory of legal personhood, this reading proposes that AIE form legal and social relations not as a legal person or as a tool, but rather as a monster on a spectrum in between. Reading the contexts of legal personhood through the text of Digimon Adventure allows for a more nuanced understanding of these relationships and interactions as AI evolves.