AI brings risks but also opportunities for consumers. When it comes to consumer law, which traditionally focuses on protecting consumers’ autonomy and self-determination, the increased use of AI also poses major challenges. This chapter discusses both the challenges and opportunities of AI in the consumer context (Section 10.2 and 10.3) and provides a brief overview of some of the relevant consumer protection instruments in the EU legal order (Section 10.4). A case study on dark patterns illustrates the shortcomings of the current consumer protection framework more concretely (Section 10.5).

Legal tech (LT) products and services automate certain tasks that lawyers usually perform. The use of these tools in business-to-consumer (B2C) markets create many opportunities for consumers and the justice system in general, but also raises concerns in terms of access to justice, choice and information, quality, fairness, redress, and representation (Sections 11.1.1–11.1.4). This chapter deals with the question of whether the current legal framework in the EU (Section 11.2) is fit to meet the challenge LT poses in consumer markets, focusing especially on (national) legal services regulation (Section 11.3), EU consumer law (Section 11.4), and EU data protection law (Section 11.5). It concludes that applying the current legal norms to LT creates the risk of both under-regulation and over-regulation and discusses possible regulatory options that should be taken into account at the national and EU level to strike the right balance between innovation and protection (Section 11.6).