The EU PLD Exposure Test: Defending Against Strict AI Liability

The revised Product Liability Directive brings strict liability rules straight to software, AI models, and automated updates. Will your technical records survive a court-ordered Article 9 disclosure?

Under the new regime, corporate compliance checklists offer zero legal protection. If an automated system causes harm, courts can order your organisation to hand over its internal logs. If your evidence is missing or unreadable, the law automatically presumes your AI was defective. You could lose by default.

The key date is 9 December 2026. From this point forward, the legal burden of proof shifts entirely. If you cannot show the evidence, you are legally liable by default.
Russell Parrott

The 16-Question Operational Exposure Diagnostic

This diagnostic isolates your immediate exposure to strict liability. It bypasses high-level governance narratives and drills into your actual technical readiness across five blunt operational vectors:

This framework converts abstract legal risks into clear, binary engineering requirements. If your records fail these tests, your legal defense collapses before a trial even begins.

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The Director Accountability Test

Oversight habits designed for a slower world fail when automated systems operate at scale. When a failure triggers a crisis, investigators and D&O insurers look directly past corporate entities to examine individual board members.

This test uses five personal markers: Participation, Information, Understanding, Judgement and Evidence to determine if your individual actions stand up under hostile cross-examination.

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DAREB© - What must be shown for a decision to stand.

Most framework metrics analyae how an AI model is supposed to function in general terms. DAREB flips the perspective by isolating one single, real outcome affecting one specific person at an exact point in times

It tracks the five strict elements of proof: Decision, Authority, Record, Evidence and Basis to verify if human responsibility can actually be established or if the trail is entirely broken.

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