Call for Papers
The 2nd Workshop on Generative AI and Law (GenLaw) is soliciting 1-2 page abstracts related to any topic pertaining to recent developments in generative AI and its legal implications, with a particular focus on implications for intellectual property (IP), privacy, data protection, and mis/disinformation law in EU and UK contexts. Possible formats include position papers, preliminary technical results, and early-stage law review submissions, which should provide novel perspectives and findings at the intersection of law and generative AI. We will use CMT for anonymous submissions (ICML Template).
Deadline: 10 June 2024, AoE.
Notification: 17 June 2024.
Camera Ready Deadline: 24 June 2024.
Potential, non-exhaustive topics:
- Clarifying open questions or misconceptions within your home discipline, aimed at interdisciplinary communication (e.g., the strengths and limitations of watermarks)
- Highlighting industry challenges regarding deployment (e.g., content filters, adversarial inputs)
- Giving legal precision to specific problems presented by generative AI (e.g., analysis of executive orders, mission statements for safety institutes)
- Evaluating models for privacy harms and data protection (e.g., PII leakages, deep fakes, unlearning)
- Understanding the relationship between data and generations (e.g., similarity, attribution)
We are happy to accept short versions of accepted or submitted papers at other venues. There will be a place to indicate that this paper is already accepted or submitted in the paper submission form. Papers accepted elsewhere are eligible for fast track.
Fast Track
If you have a paper that was already accepted elsewhere, we will do a light review for topic fit, instead of re-reviewing the paper, to determine acceptance. Please still submit a 2-page extended abstract. This abstract should be in the same format as other submissions to this workshop. The goal here is to adapt the paper to be understandable to an interdisciplinary audience. If you have technical results, please include a sample of your technical results in the 2-page extended abstract.
At the end of the CMT submission form, there is a question labeled “Fast Track” where you can indicate that you would like to be considered for this option. This question will ask for information about where the paper has already been accepted or published.
About the workshop submission format
There is no need to include an abstract section in your submission – the submission is itself an extended abstract! Instead of a single paragraph, as is typical for abstracts in ML conferences and journals, submissions allow for two pages to summarize the paper’s contributions. This way, there is the chance to articulate more details about the contributions, provide sample of preliminary technical results (if relevant), and engage with/cite related work. After acceptance, authors have the opportunity to expand their submissions to full-length workshop papers, which will be discussed (workshopped!) at the workshop poster session.
This type of workshop submission process (extended abstract at submission time, full paper later) is common practice for workshops in law and other disciplines. We are particularly drawing on the submission model from the Privacy Law Scholars Conference, as this venue has a long history of workshopping non-archival papers that deal with topics in law and technology.
Submission + Formatting
Please submit to CMT. We will review submissions in a rolling fashion, in order to enable as much time as possible for the visa application process for authors who would need a visa to attend GenLaw ’24 in person. The submission window will end on 11 June 2024, AoE, and the form will contain a checkbox to indicate if there is at least one author that plans to attend GenLaw ’24 and would need a visa to do so. If this category is applicable, please submit as early as possible to facilitate speedy review.
Please anonymize your submission and respect a 2-page maximum using the ICML Template. We allow up to 2 additional pages for references. We will be using a double-blind review process.
Please see our reviewer guidelines for more information.
Accepted papers
Accepted papers will present posters in-person or on Zoom. We will also accept other presentation formats, since scholarship from some disciplines may not be well-suited to posters. Additionally, some submissions will be accepted for a 3-minute spotlight. This workshop is non-archival to allow for future submission to other venues (any/all archival and non-archival workshops, journals, conferences, etc.). We will host all accepted papers on the website, unless requested not to do so by the authors.
Accepted papers may also optionally expand to 4-8 pages for camera ready.
Reviewer Guidelines
Papers will be reviewed by a panel of 3 interdisciplinary reviewers.
Reviews will consist of:
- 1-2 sentence summary of the paper (this is not a critical review)
- A multiple choice question concerning alignment of the submission with the CFP
- 2-3 sentence critical review that addresses overall clarity, soundness/rigor, originality/novelty, and adequate treatment of related work. We provide more details on these considerations below:
- An abstract that submits a novel “big idea” nevertheless needs to have a sufficient level of detail to be able to evaluate its feasibility and relationship to prior work. The abstract should be well motivated with connections to prior work.
- We will also accept abstracts that build on prior work in smaller ways, as long as they are well-written and sound. Bringing significant clarity to existing discussions can also be a useful contribution in its own right.
- We deliberately limited the number of pages of references to emphasize quality of engagement with existing work, rather than quantity, especially given that these are short papers.
- A recommendation (accept, unsure, reject). This recommendation should be grounded in the critical review.
- If the recommendation is “accept”: 1 sentence on your favorite strength(s) about the submission. We will use this to highlight high-quality submissions on the website. Feel free to directly copy or repurpose language from the critical review.
- We will have some recognition (more specific than “best”) for high-quality submissions.
- A confidence score regarding the recommendation.
- A checkbox to recommend particularly outstanding papers for a spotlight talk during the workshop.
- A checkbox to indicate red flags/ ethical concerns (with an open text box).
Lastly, the following field will not be visible to other reviewers or to authors.
- An additional box for confidential comments to the organizers.
Camera-ready instructions
Spotlight Award Consideration Deadline: July 10th, AoE on CMT
Spotlight Decisions Released: July 17th, AoE
Camera-ready Paper Deadline: July 24th, AoE on CMT
If your paper has been accepted for presentation at GenLaw ’24 at ICML, please read the camera-ready instructions in their entirety, as they include important information about the process for selecting spotlight awards, submitting final camera-ready drafts, hosting papers on the GenLaw website, and preparing posters.
ICML Workshops Registration: All attendees must register for ICML workshops. Please register on this page, where there are both in-person and virtual options at checkout.
Camera-Ready Paper Format:
Given the variation in norms across disciplines, we will accept papers in a variety of formats and lengths. All papers should be de-anonymized .
(Predominantly) machine learning/computing field papers: If your paper predominantly involves contributions in machine learning or a related area of computing, please use the ICML LaTeX template (and adjust the year to 2024). Aligning with ML conference norms, final papers may use a maximum of 9 pages, with unlimited pages for optional acknowledgements, impact statements, references, and appendices.
(Predominantly) law papers: If your paper predominantly involves contributions in law, please submit a PDF version of a (loosely) journal-formatted text document. This format should cohere with what one would submit to law review journals for review. There is no hard maximum on page length. There is no need to adhere to detailed Bluebook citation formatting, however, please make sure that any footnotes are easily understandable for the reader.
Other papers: If you do not believe that your paper fits clearly into either of the above categories, we leave it up to the authors’ discretion to pick the appropriate format.
If you have questions about these formatting instructions, please email [email protected] for assistance.
The PC will make decisions for spotlight awards, which have an associated live talk slot at the workshop, after this deadline. Authors have the option to submit an edited paper that coheres with the appropriate camera-ready paper format (see above) for spotlight consideration. As a default, if an updated paper is not submitted by this deadline, the PC will evaluate the original abstract submission for spotlight consideration. Papers for which at least one of the lead authors is workshop organizer or invited presenter are ineligible for spotlight awards.
Spotlight review: For ease of review, the PC will review up to the first 3 pages of the paper when making recommendations for spotlight awards. For unedited abstracts, this will include the whole 2-page original submission. For authors that submit edited papers by July 10th, AoE, please ensure that all key points that you would like to have evaluated are referenced within the first 3 pages.
There are an additional 7 days after the spotlight award consideration deadline to make final edits to papers. Please incorporate the feedback from reviewers (and, if provided, meta-reviewers) in final paper versions.
Please submit your camera-ready paper on CMT by July 24, AoE as a PDF file containing the full text.
Online paper hosting
We are going to host the PDFs on the workshop website. If authors do not wish for their paper to be included on the website, please email [email protected] with: “Please do not host paper {Paper #} on the GenLaw website.”
Poster session
All accepted papers will be required to present at a workshop poster session. Since this is an interdisciplinary workshop, we are flexible on the format for poster presentation. There will be two sessions, which will not conflict: the in-person poster session at the workshop, and a virtual poster session (date and time to be announced soon).
To gather some information about in-person vs. virtual attendance and paper hosting on the GenLaw website, we would greatly appreciate if you could please fill out this brief Google form (This form can be filled out multiple times, in the event that you have multiple accepted papers).
In accordance with ICML instructions, workshop posters “must be portrait and not exceed: 36in (H) x 24in (W) or 91cm (H) x 61cm (W). … Workshop posters must be in portrait format.” There will be other vendors in Vienna who can print posters. Alternatively, posters could be printed in advance before you travel and brought to ICML.