Andrew Gass

San Francisco
Andrew Gass is an attorney at Latham & Watkins with a keen focus on AI, stemming from a strategic planning process initiated during 2017-18. This foresight led to Latham's current expertise in AI matters, particularly in the legal needs of technology companies.
Gass's first involvement in generative AI-related counseling began in the summer of 2020, a time when the potential legal complexities of AI were just beginning to surface.
"All of us at Latham benefited from many months of iterative work deep in the trenches with our clients who were building these tools," he said. "The kinds of questions they had -- from IP, to privacy, to other ethical and regulatory issues -- just couldn't be answered without a deep and detailed understanding of how the technology works. We were very careful to pair the right lawyers on our side with the right folks at the tech companies we represent to get hands-on experience, in the early years, with the mechanics of the existing generation of tools, and where we anticipated they would go in the future."
The team at Latham, including Gass, has had the opportunity to defend a variety of technology companies in litigation concerning their AI tools. Notably, they represent OpenAI in approximately a dozen cases, including one filed by the New York Times.
Other clients include Anthropic, facing litigation from the music publishing industry, and the music-focused startups Suno and Udio in their legal battles against major record labels.
"The common thread is the relationship between and among law, culture, and technology: sorting out complex questions concerning how to prevent any one stakeholder from monopolizing critical elements of our shared heritage, from language itself, to facts about the world, to genres of artistic expression," Gass said. "For OpenAI, I was pleased to have argued the motion to dismiss a significant portion of the first cases they faced, which the court granted last February."
He added for Anthropic, he won an early skirmish over whether the plaintiffs could forum-shop and litigate their case in Tennessee, rather than San Francisco, where the company is based.
When asked about trends, Gass said: "The threshold challenge in litigating generative AI cases is thinking through how to explain to judges and other audiences what the technology does and how it works. So much depends on debunking widespread misunderstandings and misplaced concerns."