Artificial intelligence in UNCITRAL model law on automated contracting

With the development of information technologies, trade has moved from traditional fields to a virtual environment. Today, artificial intelligence-based software and systems whose function is the automation of contractual relations are widespread. The preparation of the contract model, the negotiation phase, the submission of the offer and its acceptance, the conclusion of the contract, changes to the concluded contract, its execution and termination can take place today without the participation of people or with their minimal participation. Contracts are created and executed between humans and AI systems, but also between two or more AI systems automatically and/or autonomously. Not only humans but also machines enter into contractual relations with or without human control and intervention. In the era of artificial intelligence, UNCITRAL, through the solutions given in the UN Convention on the Use of Electronic Communications in International Contracts and the Model Law on Automatic Contracting, is trying to respond to the challenges that this technology brings to private-law contractual relations and contract law. UNCITRAL's working group IV on electronic commerce created technologically neutral legal rules that recognize the legal force of contracts concluded in this way. The subject of this paper is the analysis of UNCITRAL 's Model Law on Automated Contracting, using the normative and comparative law method, with the aim of presenting a brief history of its creation, showing its structure, the principles on which it rests and the norms it contains. The norms were then discussed in the light of the Law on Artificial Intelligence of the European Union and the conditions it sets for the use of artificial intelligence, all for the sake of a more complete and comprehensive understanding of the regulatory framework that is emerging and exists in the sphere of contracting automatization, as well as pointing out the gaps that are more difficult to fill in the application of artificial intelligence in this area.