Ignacio Cofone

Ignacio Cofone is Professor of Law and Regulation of AI, working jointly at the Faculty of Law and the Institute for Ethics in AI, and a Fellow of Reuben College. He is also an Affiliated Fellow of the Yale Law School Information Society Project and an Affiliate Member of the Quebec AI Institute. Before joining Oxford, he was the Canada Research Chair in AI Law and Data Governance at McGill University and has been appointed for visiting positions at NYU School of Law, University of St Gallen, Bar-Ilan University, Tilburg University, and Torcuato Di Tella University.

Ignacio’s research examines how the law can and should adapt to social and economic changes driven by data and AI. His recent book, The Privacy Fallacy: Harm and Power in the Information Economy (CUP 2023), argues that AI requires restructuring privacy and data protection law based on the duties that we owe one another as members of society—typically captured by extracontractual obligations—because basing these bodies of law on individual control has become ineffective. His current research focuses on how to prevent and redress nonmaterial AI harms and on regulatory design that fosters human-centred AI.

Ignacio obtained doctorates from Yale Law School (JSD) and from Hamburg University and Erasmus University Rotterdam (joint PhD, rerum politicarum), as well as common law and civil law degrees. He advises governments, courts, and other organizations on how to adjust law and regulation in view of AI—such as by working with the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada on an overhaul of private sector Canadian privacy law. He actively welcomes candidates for doctoral and postdoctoral supervision at the Faculty of Law, particularly but not only from scholars with interdisciplinary or comparative law backgrounds.

For details on his publications, please see SSRN or Google Scholar. He posts about AI and data on Twitter [X] and LinkedIn.