International Trade and Artificial Intelligence: Is trade policy ready for Chat GPT?

The document identifies several critical gaps in current international trade rules as artificial intelligence (AI) integrates into goods and services. It highlights the difficulty of the goods-services distinction, the inadequacy of GATS modes of delivery for AI-embedded products, and the lack of TRIPS agreement definitions for AI-generated intellectual property. While acknowledging the WTO's slow pacing and divergent national norms, the author argues that the WTO should utilize soft law and informal norms to prevent regulatory fragmentation and ensure inclusive global economic growth.

• AI creates a regulatory challenge regarding the distinction between goods and services, as AI is increasingly incorporated into physical products like self-driving cars and robotics. The current lack of universal rules leads to a fragmented landscape of free trade agreements that may increase trade costs.
• The General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) is ill-equipped for AI because its four modes of delivery do not account for services embedded in goods, which leads to the effective tariffication of services. This has led to proposals for a 'mode 5' of services delivery to capture embodied services content, which could potentially increase world trade by EUR 500 billion according to a 2017 study.
• The WTO's Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) fails to define how to handle AI-generated works, resulting in inconsistent domestic legislation among member states that ranges from full protection to no protection due to requirements for human creativity.
• While the WTO is the logical venue for addressing these gaps, it is hindered by a 'pacing problem' where technological innovation outstrips regulation, as well as divergent normative approaches to privacy and morality between regions like the European Union and the United States.
• To overcome the difficulty of establishing hard law, the WTO could implement soft law, informal rules, and norms to coordinate AI regulation and prevent the digital divide from worsening.

APA

Krummenacher, P. (2023). International Trade and Artificial Intelligence: Is trade policy ready for Chat GPT? International Institute for Sustainable Development. https://www.iisd.org/articles/policy-analysis/international-trade-artificial-intelligence-chatgpt

Chicago

Krummenacher, Pascal. International Trade and Artificial Intelligence: Is trade policy ready for Chat GPT? International Institute for Sustainable Development, 2023. https://www.iisd.org/articles/policy-analysis/international-trade-artificial-intelligence-chatgpt.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Krummenacher |first1=Pascal |title=International Trade and Artificial Intelligence: Is trade policy ready for Chat GPT? |publisher=International Institute for Sustainable Development |date=14 April 2023 |url=https://www.iisd.org/articles/policy-analysis/international-trade-artificial-intelligence-chatgpt |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{krummenacher2023international, author = {Krummenacher, Pascal}, title = {{International Trade and Artificial Intelligence: Is trade policy ready for Chat GPT?}}, institution = {International Institute for Sustainable Development}, year = {2023}, month = apr, url = {https://www.iisd.org/articles/policy-analysis/international-trade-artificial-intelligence-chatgpt}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }