Yeah - I'm pretty sure, technically, that current AI isn't conscious in any meaningful way, and even the agentic scaffolding and systems put together lack any persistent, meaningful notion of "mind", especially in a legal sense. There are some newer architectures and experiments with the subjective modeling and "wiring" that I'd consider solid evidence of structural consciousness, but for now, AI is a tool. It also looks like we can make tools arbitrarily intelligent and competent, and we can extend the capabilities to superhuman time scales, so I think the law needs to come up with an explicit precedent for "This person is the user of the tool which did the bad thing" - it could be negligent, reckless, deliberate, or malicious, but I don't think there's any credibility to the idea that "the AI did it!"

At worst, you would confer liability to the platform, in the case of some sort of blatant misrepresentation of capabilities or features, but absolutely none of the products or models currently available withstand any rational scrutiny into whether they are conscious or not. They at most can undergo a "flash" of subjective experience, decoupled from any coherent sequence or persistent phenomenon.

We need research and legitimate, scientific, rational definitions for agency and consciousness and subjective experience, because there will come a point where such software becomes available, and it not only presents novel legal questions, but incredible moral and ethical questions as well. Accidentally oopsing a torment nexus into existence with residents possessed of superhuman capabilities sounds like a great way to spark off the first global interspecies war. Well, at least since the Great Emu War. If we lost to the emus, we'll have no chance against our digital offspring.

A good lawyer will probably get away with "the AI did it, it wasn't me!" before we get good AI law, though. It's too new and mysterious and opaque to normal people.

It's just a database. It is not intelligent. It's ability for consciousness is the same as Gandalf's.