LawTech.Asia

TechLaw.Fest 2024: Be Ready for Tomorrow

On 1st September 2025

In Artificial Intelligence, Internet Governance, Law Firms, Lawyers, Legal Hackers, Legal Innovation, Policy, Regulations

Reading time: 9 minutes

Written by Hannah Nadia, Daniel Koh and Wei Lin Tan | Edited by Josh Lee Kok Thong

Introduction

In the 2023 edition of Techlaw.Fest, LawTech.Asia posed the question: what’s next for law and technology? The 2024 edition of TechLaw.Fest gave us our answer: Artificial Intelligence (“AI”).

The theme for TechLaw.Fest 2024 – “Be Ready for Tomorrow” – is a nod towards current anxieties over AI’s disruptive potential for the legal industry, as well as how AI is changing the way we think about legal issues. The theme aptly urges legal practitioners to set their sails and map ahead for the incoming wave of opportunities and challenges unleashed by new AI technologies

At the heart of TechLaw.Fest 2024 were four key topics: (1) AI in law; (2) global AI regulations and AI governance; (3) deepfakes and misinformation; and (4) inclusivity. TechLaw.Fest 2024 also saw several significant announcements, such as the launch of the Copilot for SG Law Firms module for the Legal Technology Platform (“LTP”) by the Ministry of Law, Lupl and Microsoft, and the launch of the Singapore Academy of Law’s and Microsoft’s Prompt Engineering Guide for Lawyers. We even saw a splash of pizzazz, with the 2024 Asia-Pacific Legal Innovation & Technology Association (“ALITA”) Awards demonstrating the best of legal technology in the region.

In this article, as the legal community gears up for TechLaw.Fest 2025 (happening on 10 and 11 September 2025), we seek to re-capture the highlights of Singapore’s signature law and technology conference in 2024, and provide a glimpse of the themes and insights shared by the expert panellists.

Refining, not reinventing, the wheel: A look at the applicability of ASEAN’s AI governance guides in Southeast Asian contexts

By Josh Lee

On 20th May 2025

In Artificial Intelligence, Policy, Regulations

Reading time: 5 minutes

Written by Eunice Huang and Josh Lee Kok Thong

Artificial intelligence (“AI”) is reshaping industries, economies, and societies worldwide. Governments across the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (“ASEAN”) intuitively understand the huge opportunity that AI can bring for their societies, and are looking for ways to foster AI innovation while carefully managing risks and challenges. At the same time, there is also growing recognition that it would be neither appropriate nor sufficient to mimic the AI regulatory approaches adopted by other jurisdictions such as the EU, China and US. Countries in ASEAN can and must chart their own regulatory pathway that is suited to Southeast Asia’s unique context, building on the region’s historically open and pro-innovation posture.

This article submits that ASEAN governments already have good, context-adapted regional resources they can use as a basis for their domestic AI governance frameworks. In particular, resources such as the ASEAN Guide on AI Governance and Ethics (February 2024) and the Expanded ASEAN Guide on AI Governance and Ethics on Generative AI (January 2025) (collectively, the “ASEAN Guides”) can serve as valuable reference points for ASEAN governments who are considering their AI governance options. These guides provide a contextually-relevant basis for formulating AI governance in Southeast Asia’s unique context. Drawing reference from these guides will also help promote greater interoperability and common standards across ASEAN. This will in turn enable AI innovation to flourish across the region, boosting ASEAN’s overall competitiveness, and advancing the ASEAN Economic Community.

Deng Haiying: The challenges and impact of generative AI on copyright law

By Josh Lee

On 8th February 2025

In Artificial Intelligence, Policy, Regulations

Reading time: 16 minutes

Written by Deng Haiying | Edited by Josh Lee Kok Thong

LawTech.Asia is proud to collaborate with the Singapore Management University Yong Pung How School of Law’s LAW4060 AI Law, Policy and Ethics class. This collaborative special series is a collection featuring selected essays from students of the class. For the class’ final assessment, students were asked to choose from a range of practice-focused topics, such as writing a law reform paper on an AI-related topic, analysing jurisdictional approaches to AI regulation, or discussing whether such a thing as “AI law” exists. The collaboration is aimed at encouraging law students to analyse issues using the analytical frames taught in class, and apply them in practical scenarios combining law and policy.

This piece, written by Deng Haiying, seeks to tackle challenges that generative AI brings to copyright law. In doing so, Haiying’s paper explores the current state of the law in Singapore on generative AI and copyright, factors to be taken into account when exploring regulatory reforms in this area, and possible regulatory solutions to tackle the copyright challenges posed by generative AI.

Joel Ko: Copyright ownership for AI-generated material

By Josh Lee

On 19th January 2025

In Artificial Intelligence, Policy, Regulations

Reading time: 30 minutes

Written by Joel Ko Chin Kye | Edited by Josh Lee Kok Thong

LawTech.Asia is proud to collaborate with the Singapore Management University Yong Pung How School of Law’s LAW4060 AI Law, Policy and Ethics class. This collaborative special series is a collection featuring selected essays from students of the class. For the class’ final assessment, students were asked to choose from a range of practice-focused topics, such as writing a law reform paper on an AI-related topic, analysing jurisdictional approaches to AI regulation, or discussing whether such a thing as “AI law” exists. The collaboration is aimed at encouraging law students to analyse issues using the analytical frames taught in class, and apply them in practical scenarios combining law and policy.

This piece, written by Joel Ko, argues that it is important for laws to be developed to accommodate the interplay of generative AI and copyright law. In doing so, Joel studies whether copyright can subsist in works purely generated by generative AI be treated; and whether we should allow works derived from AI-generated content to be copyrightable, particular in situations where there is sufficient human editorial control.

Kaelynn Kok: Reassessing the balance between creator’s rights and innovation in the age of generative AI

By Josh Lee

On 19th January 2025

In Artificial Intelligence, Policy, Regulations

Reading time: 29 minutes

Written by Kaelynn Kok Chu Shuen | Edited by Josh Lee Kok Thong

LawTech.Asia is proud to collaborate with the Singapore Management University Yong Pung How School of Law’s LAW4060 AI Law, Policy and Ethics class. This collaborative special series is a collection featuring selected essays from students of the class. For the class’ final assessment, students were asked to choose from a range of practice-focused topics, such as writing a law reform paper on an AI-related topic, analysing jurisdictional approaches to AI regulation, or discussing whether such a thing as “AI law” exists. The collaboration is aimed at encouraging law students to analyse issues using the analytical frames taught in class, and apply them in practical scenarios combining law and policy.

This piece, written by Kaelynn Kok, considers several legal issues around the use of copyrighted material in generative AI training. These include: (a) the appropriate balance Singapore should strike between protecting the rights of creators and supporting AI innovation; (b) whether Singapore’s existing copyright defences are applicable to protect AI developers from copyright infringement claims; and (c) the best approach for Singapore to take.