Comment by Frank Fagan

Legal personhood has long functioned as a tool for settling high-stakes conflicts in corporate organization, immigration, environmental protection, and political representation, and its allocation has consistently reflected the power and preferences of affected stakeholders. This article brings that institutional dynamic to debates over artificial intelligence by treating AI personhood not as a declaration of intrinsic status, but as a governance choice that reallocates responsibility. Personhood operates as an architecture for assigning liability and creating regulatory sightlines, and extending it to AI would reshape the strategic incentives of developers, insurers, regulators, victims, and moral advocates in divergent ways.