The AI Drop

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The AI Drop #26: A View from Two Desks: The Dispatch from London on AI Policy, IP, and the Future of Personal Agents with Giles Pratt Oct 13, 2026

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When two lawyers who co-head a global AI practice spend the day at a high-level policy forum, they come home with a lot on their minds. In this episode, Anna Gressel and Giles Pratt, Freshfields' Global Head of IP/Data Practice and Global Co-Head of AI, cover The Observer's new global AI cities rankings, the copyright questions looming over AI-generated code, the UK's pro-innovation policy bet — and a prediction for 2027 that involves all of us. Consider it the debrief that didn't stay in the room.

Giles explains why investors now ask whether the AI work they fund can actually be owned, and how UK law uniquely protects computer-generated works for 50 years, versus life plus 70 for a human author. He also warns that unsettled rules on model training could shape where data centers get built.

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☑️ Giles Pratt | LinkedIn

☑️ Anna Gressel | LinkedIn

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The AI Drop #25: The Mouse and the Maze: How to Govern AI Agents That Keep Evolving with Jason Stanley Oct 06, 2026

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In this episode of The AI Drop, Jason Stanley, Head of Applied AI Research at ServiceNow, returns for another discussion with host Anna Gressel on one of the most pressing challenges in AI governance: how to oversee AI systems that continue to adapt after deployment. Together, they explore what adaptive and self-improving AI means for enterprise risk and governance.

He explains why an AI system can excel at one task yet fail at a slightly reworded version of it, and why critical governance controls must sit beyond an agent's ability to modify them, even if those safeguards may not hold indefinitely.

Jason and Anna also discuss how contracts can transform voluntary standards into binding obligations more quickly than new regulation, and why effective oversight must extend to how AI systems evolve at runtime.

For legal, risk, and technology leaders alike, this conversation gives insight on the governance questions likely to dominate 2027.

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☑️ Jason Stanley | LinkedIn | github

☑️ Anna Gressel | LinkedIn

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The AI Drop #24: The Seatbelt, Not the Brake: Building AI Governance That Enables Innovation with Polina Zvyagina Sep 29, 2026

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The most effective AI governance programs don't slow innovation down. They create the guardrails, visibility, and trust needed to scale AI responsibly and confidently.

In Part 2 of this conversation, Anna Gressel welcomes back Polina Zvyagina, Director and Executive Lead Counsel for AI & Data Governance at General Motors, for a deep dive into what effective AI governance looks like in practice. From NIST's AI Risk Management Framework to the challenges of AI agents, shadow AI, evaluations, and scalable governance, Polina shares practical insights on building governance that works in the real world. The conversation also examines why governance should function as a "seatbelt, not a brake," helping organizations innovate faster while maintaining trust, transparency, and accountability. They also discuss the importance of human judgment, evaluating AI outputs, fitness-for-purpose testing, and avoiding overreliance on AI systems as organizations scale adoption. For governance leaders, legal professionals, and business leaders alike, this episode offers a important insights for building responsible AI programs that can evolve alongside the technology.

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☑️ Polina Zvyagina | LinkedIn

☑️ Anna Gressel | LinkedIn

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The AI Drop #23: The 360-Degree View: How AI Product Counsel Build Trust at Scale with Polina Zvyagina Sep 22, 2026

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In this episode of The AI Drop, Anna Gressel sits down with Polina Zvyagina, Director and Executive Lead Counsel for AI & Data Governance at General Motors, to explore one of the most sought-after legal roles in tech today: AI Product Counsel. Polina shares how she helped pioneer the AI product counseling field and explains why the future of AI governance depends on embedding legal, policy, and risk expertise directly into the product development process.

Together, Anna and Polina explore how organizations can move beyond treating AI governance as a compliance exercise and instead use it to enable responsible innovation. Polina also offers a behind-the-scenes look at the AI product counsel role, sharing how legal teams work alongside engineers and business leaders to balance innovation with privacy, transparency, consumer protection, and other key risks. For lawyers and governance professionals alike, the conversation provides practical insights into one of the fastest-growing roles in the AI ecosystem.

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☑️ Polina Zvyagina | LinkedIn

☑️ Anna Gressel | LinkedIn

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The AI Drop #22: Hardware, Software, and Everything in Between: How Export Controls Are Adapting to the Full AI Stack with Nabeel Yousef Sep 15, 2026

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Export controls have always started with a simple question: what is the thing, and where can it go? AI is complicating that equation. Nabeel Yousef, a Freshfields partner whose practice spans US sanctions, export control, and anti-corruption law, joins host Anna Gressel to map where frontier technology meets national security regulation. Together, they explore the three issues clients are grappling with most: semiconductor controls, the software powering AI infrastructure, and the potential impact of the pending Remote Access Security Act. They also discuss the risks of integrating Chinese AI models, the emerging East-West divide in AI development, and why many compliance programs have become outdated “Frankensteins” in a rapidly evolving regulatory landscape. As Nabeel explains, one of the biggest compliance risks is assuming your house is already in order.

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☑️ Nabeel Yousef | LinkedIn

☑️ Anna Gressel | LinkedIn

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The AI Drop #21: Least Agency: Rewriting the Cybersecurity Playbook for AI Agents with Megan Kayo Sep 08, 2026

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Megan Kayo, a Freshfields partner focused on AI, cybersecurity, and privacy, joins host Anna Gressel to unpack what makes agentic incidents fundamentally different from traditional cybersecurity incidents. Since agents act on their own, spawn sub-agents, and reason unpredictably, they strain frameworks like NIST built for human threat actors. Megan explains why agents require immutable identities and adherence to the principle of "least agency," and why shadow AI and third-party sprawl make the risk surface so hard to govern. Drawing on her experience guiding clients through incidents, Megan also offers practical steps security and legal teams can take to get ahead of agentic risk.

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☑️ Megan Kayo | LinkedIn

☑️ Anna Gressel | LinkedIn

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The AI Drop #20: The Morning Brief: How AI Workflows Are Transforming Legal and Governance Teams with Suchismita Pahi Sep 01, 2026

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Whether you're automating your morning to-do list or an entire enterprise compliance program, one principle separates success from failure: figure out the process before you hand it to the tool. Suchismita Pahi, Lead Counsel for Product at Databricks, joins host Anna Gressel to trace that thread from her own daily AI workflows to the AI compliance program she built from the ground up . Instead of a legal checklist nobody wants to fill out, Suchi took an operations-first approach that integrates legal, IT, and security. She and Anna dig into what changes as passive LLMs give way to an agentic enterprise — identity management, the principal-agent problem, acceptable error rates - and they share practical insights on building cross-functional AI governance. The episode concludes with a look at the AI use cases that excite Suchi most, including the future of AI-powered scientific research and innovation.

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☑️ Suchismita Pahi | LinkedIn

☑️ Anna Gressel | LinkedIn

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The AI Drop #19: From Mycelia to Machines: Rethinking Intelligence in an Age of AI with Dr. Rumman Chowdhury Aug 25, 2026

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Intelligence isn't a fixed quantity we can measure — it's a construct, and the moment we insist on measuring machines against ourselves, we could miss what they can do and misjudge what they can't. Dr. Rumman Chowdhury — founder and CEO of Humane Intelligence and the first U.S. Science Envoy for AI — joins host Anna Gressel to unpack the ideas behind Thinking About Thinking, her podcast and the book she's now writing. Drawing on everything from mycelial networks to a recent Oxford debate on legal personhood, Rumman and Anna also explore reasoning, anthropomorphizing, and the human skills — discernment, curiosity, imagination — that AI can't automate.

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☑️ Rumman Chowdhury | LinkedIn

☑️ Anna Gressel | LinkedIn

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The AI Drop #18: What's a Robot Worth? Valuation, Data & the Power of Physical AI with Shenwei Zhu and Lauren Schwartz Aug 18, 2026

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Is physical AI ready for primetime? Recorded live at Citi's Robotics and Physical AI Conference, this episode captures a market at an inflection point, maturing in "dog years" as it accelerates from demo to deployment at breakneck speed. Host Anna Gressel is joined by Shenwei Zhu, a Citigroup managing director covering industrial technology and robotics, and Lauren Schwartz, CISO and General Counsel of Centific, a global data and AI solutions company. Together they explore why data has become both the bottleneck and the moat in physical AI, how investors evaluate robotics companies on unit economics and customer value, and why the winning proposition is to sell measurable outcomes. Shenwei and Lauren also weigh liability gaps and offer founders hard-won advice on capital and data strategy.

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☑️ Lauren Schwartz | LinkedIn

☑️ Shenwei Zhu | LinkedIn

☑️ Anna Gressel | LinkedIn

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The AI Drop #17: Delegate the Decision, Not the Liability — How the SEC Views Agentic AI with Melissa Hodgman Aug 11, 2026

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In this episode, host Anna Gressel is joined by Freshfields Partner Melissa Hodgman, a former SEC enforcement official, who traces that arc from the SEC’s interest in pattern-spotting tools built after the 2008 crisis to today's "AI washing" disclosure cases and other areas of SEC enforcement interest. As Melissa puts it, “you can delegate decision-making to a machine, but you can't delegate liability.” For years, enforcement turned on what a single person knew — knowledge firms could contain with walls, locked doors, and policies. Melissa explains why a learning system that moves information across an organization makes that a far harder question: what did the system know? From there she unpacks how investor protection shapes the agency's interest in agentic AI, and what belongs on a general counsel's hit list. Her closing advice — engage regulators early, and treat securities law as principle-based.

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☑️ Melissa Hodgman | LinkedIn

☑️ Anna Gressel | LinkedIn

☑️ Freshfields

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