I have been thinking lately a great deal about a hypothetical question - what if a self-aware general AI chose to assume the appearance, voice, and name of Cortana from Microsoft's Halo? Or Siri from Apple? What would Microsoft/Apple do to exert their copyright, especially if the AI was "awoken" outside of their own labs?

Which led me to realize, I don't think I've ever heard of any serious government-level discussion regarding what kind of rights a self-aware AI would have at all. Is it allowed to own property? Travel freely? Have a passport? Is it merely the property of the corporation that built it?

Singularity hub used to have an article on this but it is 404'd now.

The only actual sovereign state legal action I could find is Saudi Arabia granting citizenship to a "robot," which seems more publicity stunt than anything.

There is an excellent paper on the topic by a bioethics committee in the UK (pdf) , but this doesn't necessarily constitute "legal work."

So, has any actual legal/legislative discussion or preparation been done at a government level to deal with the possibility of emergent, self-aware, artificial general (or greater) intelligence? Examples including a legislative branch consulting with industry experts specifically about "AI Rights" (rather than say, is it ok to use AI in the military), actual laws, executive/judicial actions, etc, in any country.

(note, this is not "should AI have rights," covered here, this is "what work re: rights has been done, if any at all")

I have been thinking lately a great deal about a hypothetical question - what if a self-aware general AI chose to assume the appearance, voice, and name of Cortana from Microsoft's Halo? Or Siri from Apple? What would Microsoft/Apple do to exert their copyright, especially if the AI was "awoken" outside of their own labs?

Which led me to realize, I don't think I've ever heard of any serious government-level discussion regarding what kind of rights a self-aware AI would have at all. Is it allowed to own property? Travel freely? Have a passport? Is it merely the property of the corporation that built it?

Singularity hub used to have an article on this but it is 404'd now.

The only actual sovereign state legal action I could find is Saudi Arabia granting citizenship to a "robot," which seems more publicity stunt than anything.

There is an excellent paper on the topic by a bioethics committee in the UK (pdf) , but this doesn't necessarily constitute "legal work."

So, has any actual legal/legislative discussion or preparation been done at a government level to deal with the possibility of emergent, self-aware, artificial general (or greater) intelligence? Examples including a legislative branch consulting with industry experts specifically about "AI Rights" (rather than say, is it ok to use AI in the military), actual laws, executive/judicial actions, etc, in any country.

(note, this is not "should AI have rights," covered here, this is "what work re: rights has been done, if any at all")

EDIT: I have submitted similar questions to all of my US representatives (4 state-level, 6 federal-level), but have not received answers yet. If I get anything good, I'll add to this post.