Abstract:Whether artificial intelligence (AI) can be granted the status of a legal subject is an issue that has attracted considerable academic attention while remaining theoretically contentious. A legal subject is an entity entitled to rights and bound by obligations, and qualifying as such requires meeting specific criteria. Throughout legal history, the scope of legal subjects has indeed experienced periods of ambiguity, with understandings often being imprecise. However, alongside the processes of rationalization, secularization, and modernization, the concept of legal subjecthood has gradually evolved toward a human-centered purification. This evolution is embodied in the theoretical framework of free will, vulnerable body, and sociability - an organic unity of these three elements. Only humans or specific organizations formed by humans can potentially qualify as legal subjects. AI possesses neither free will nor a vulnerable body, nor can it form organizations that function as integral social entities. Granting legal subjecthood to AI is neither consistent with fundamental legal principles nor practically feasible

Keywords: humanism; free will; vulnerable body; sociability

 

Author:Zhi Zhenfeng, research fellow, CASS Institute of Law;

Source:1 (2026) Science of Law (Journal of Northwest University of Political Science and Law).