Have you ever wondered what happens when a product counsel ignores AI literacy? The risk skyrockets. The first time I heard a lawyer say, “I don’t need to understand how the algorithm works; that’s the engineers’ problem,” I winced. Not because I’m secretly a coder (my GitHub is embarrassingly empty), but because that mindset is a lawsuit waiting to happen.
Artificial intelligence is not just another product feature. It’s a living, learning, sometimes unpredictable force. It can reshape business models, invite regulatory scrutiny, and — in the worst cases — make front-page headlines. For product counsel, AI literacy is no longer optional. You must speak both the language of code and the language of case law.
The Rise of AI Literacy for Product Counsel
We have entered an era where legal advice on AI products can’t stop at “check the privacy policy and update the T&Cs.” That’s like telling a Formula 1 driver to just obey the speed limit.
AI literacy for product counsel means understanding how models function and how laws apply to them. It lets you walk into a product meeting and ask whether the training data contains hidden bias. It helps you notice when a model’s confidence score is treated as a guarantee of truth. It also allows you to anticipate that a black-box model might create explainability problems under the EU AI Act.
You don’t need to spend weekends coding neural networks. But you do need enough fluency to turn engineering realities into legal risk assessments — and legal requirements into engineering specifications.
Why AI Literacy Matters for Product Counsel
Consider Amazon’s ill-fated AI recruiting tool. Engineers built it to sort résumés. The model learned from historical hiring data that male candidates were preferable. Bias followed. Headlines followed. Legal trouble soon arrived.
A counsel skilled in AI literacy could have asked early: How do we ensure the model doesn’t replicate past discrimination? What systems will document safeguards for compliance?
The Getty Images lawsuit against Stability AI offers another lesson. The dispute centers on whether training an AI model on copyrighted works without permission violates intellectual property law. A hybrid-literate counsel could have identified that the dataset contained protected material and initiated licensing talks before any legal demand letter appeared.
The Risks of Single-Language Counsel
When you speak only law, you may miss early warning signs hidden in technical design choices, such as the use of sensitive biometric data that triggers entirely different regulatory regimes. When you speak only code, you may underestimate how a single compliance failure can breach contracts, invite regulatory penalties, and erode public trust.
Either gap leaves value on the table and risk in the product.
How to Start Speaking Both
The good news is that hybrid literacy can be built. Learn the basics of AI: model types, training data, bias, accuracy metrics, and limitations. Sit in on engineering reviews and listen to how your product team describes AI features, asking questions until you understand the why behind each decision. Keep track of global AI regulations, from the EU AI Act to the White House AI Bill of Rights, since they shape what compliance even means. Develop a translation framework that connects legal obligations with technical requirements, such as linking explainability mandates to audit log practices or privacy rules to data minimization. And, most importantly, build trust with engineers so they feel comfortable flagging risks to you early. Many AI legal problems are easiest to solve before the first line of code is written.
The Bottom Line
In AI-driven products, the real power of counsel is not in saying “no.” It is in saying “yes, if” and then helping design a path that meets both technical feasibility and legal obligations. Speaking both code and case law does more than prevent disasters. It opens doors to innovation and makes you a trusted partner in product development, not the final stop before launch.
When AI meets law, translation is not a luxury. It is the difference between a product that changes the world and one that changes your company’s name to “Defendant.”
