The AI Drop
The AI Drop is a podcast that explores how artificial intelligence is reshaping industries around the world. Each episode features expert interviews and actionable advice for leveraging AI to create business value while managing evolving legal and regulatory challenges. The show releases fresh episodes weekly, keeping listeners up to date with the latest developments in AI. It is produced by Freshfields, a global law firm, offering a professional perspective on AI's impact.
Episodes
The AI Drop™ #27: On the Front Lines: Tracking AI Regulation From California to New York with Megan Kayo
California and New York are taking different approaches to AI oversight, but both reflect a shift toward more active regulation. Host Anna Gressel welcomes back Freshfields partner Megan Kayo to share key takeaways from PLI’s first AI governance event in New York, which Anna chaired. The event featured keynote fireside chats with two leading state regulators, offering a view from the front lines o
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
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 — a
The AI Drop #25: The Mouse and the Maze: How to Govern AI Agents That Keep Evolving with Jason Stanley
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 ca
The AI Drop #24: The Seatbelt, Not the Brake: Building AI Governance That Enables Innovation with Polina Zvyagina
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
The AI Drop #23: The 360-Degree View: How AI Product Counsel Build Trust at Scale with Polina Zvyagina
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, an
The AI Drop #22: Hardware, Software, and Everything in Between: How Export Controls Are Adapting to the Full AI Stack with Nabeel Yousef
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 grapplin
The AI Drop #21: Least Agency: Rewriting the Cybersecurity Playbook for AI Agents with Megan Kayo
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
The AI Drop #20: The Morning Brief: How AI Workflows Are Transforming Legal and Governance Teams with Suchismita Pahi
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
The AI Drop #19: From Mycelia to Machines: Rethinking Intelligence in an Age of AI with Dr. Rumman Chowdhury
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 bo
The AI Drop #18: What's a Robot Worth? Valuation, Data & the Power of Physical AI with Shenwei Zhu and Lauren Schwartz
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 Couns
The AI Drop #17: Delegate the Decision, Not the Liability — How the SEC Views Agentic AI with Melissa Hodgman
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 liabi
The AI Drop #16: The AI Race: China's Open-Source Play for Global AI Adoption with Beth George
In this episode of The AI Drop, Anna Gressel sits down with Beth George (Freshfields Partner, Head of US Litigation and Global Co-Head of Strategic Risk Management) to discuss the geopolitical implications of China's latest AI advances, including Kimi K3, and what they signal for the global AI race. Rather than focusing solely on who builds the most powerful model, they explore why the real compet
The AI Drop #15: Designing the Future: How Kohler Is Building an AI-Enabled Enterprise with Eric Tabor and Megan Belcher
Kohler's approach to enterprise AI starts with a simple bet: teach every employee to build and manage their own agents rather than bring in consultants. Eric Tabor, Kohler's chief digital officer, and Megan Belcher, the company's chief legal officer, join host Anna Gressel to explain how that philosophy has shaped both the 153-year-old design company's technology roadmap and its governance model.
The AI Drop #14: Privilege, Meet Prompt: A Practical Guide to AI in the Legal World with Rob McCallum
When privileged prompts pass through an AI tool, whether they stay privileged is a key question coming before courts globally today — and those courts are digging into the facts and terms to decide. Rob McCallum, a Freshfields tech litigator, tells host Anna Gressel that privilege questions come up in his practice pretty much every day, and that the conversation has shifted from whether to use AI
The AI Drop #13: Who Watches the Agents? Governing Work in the Era of Agentic AI with Jason Stanley
As AI agents become more autonomous, who is responsible for overseeing their work?
In this episode of The AI Drop, host Anna Gressel is joined by Jason Stanley, Head of Applied AI Research at ServiceNow, for a deep dive into the emerging world of agentic AI governance. Together, they explore why traditional AI governance frameworks may not be enough for autonomous systems, the importance of deplo
The AI Drop #12: The Honest Oracle: Smart Contracts, AI Agents, and the View from Abu Dhabi, with Magdalena Konig
What happens when agentic AI's agility meets blockchain rigidity? Magdalena Konig, GC of Sirius International Holding — IHC's technology subsidiary — argues the result is paradoxically powerful: a more agile, rigid structure where use cases multiply exponentially. Host Anna Gressel sits down with Magdalena in Abu Dhabi to explore how smart contracts and agents are natural partners, from logistics
The AI Drop #11: Concrete and Capital: Building the Backbone of the AI Era, with Jessamy Gallagher and Harry Evans
Data centers are dominating headlines — and the pressures behind them are only growing. In this episode, host Anna Gressel welcomes Jessamy Gallagher, Freshfields partner and global head of the firm's Energy and Real assets group, and Harry Evans, a Freshfields partner in Singapore focused on tech, telecom, and financial services. They map the data center boom from two angles: global capital marke
The AI Drop #10: Before the Briefing: A GC's Guide to AI in the Boardroom, with Elizabeth Bieber
Most boards today have no clear owner for AI oversight and according to Freshfields Partner Elizabeth Bieber. That may not be fatal, but it is a problem that needs a plan. Anna Gressel and Leza, who leads Freshfields' shareholder engagement and activism defense practice, dig into the practical challenges General Counsels face when preparing board briefings on AI.
They explore the tension between p
The AI Drop #9: Trust in the Balance: Navigating Reality in the AI Age with Claire Leibowicz
As the line between real and synthetic blurs, trust is becoming one of the defining challenges of the AI era.
In this episode, Anna Gressel and Claire Leibowicz (Director of AI, Trust, and Society at the Partnership on AI (PAI)) explore how synthetic media is reshaping authenticity - well beyond deepfakes - raising complex questions about misrepresentation, context, and evidence. They discuss emer
The AI Drop #8: Hello, Operator – How AI Agents Recruit Humans to Reach the Offline World with Umang Bhatt
Most debates about AI focus on the people using it. Umang Bhatt is asking us to pay attention to what happens at the edges of that interaction — including the people who never touch AI but increasingly bear its consequences, and the human labor that AI agents subtly pull into their workflows. Umang is an Assistant Professor in Trustworthy AI at the University of Cambridge, and he joins host Anna G
The AI Drop #7: From Pixels to Physics – How Robots Learn (and Why It's So Hard) with Roozbeh Mottaghi
Between scripted demos, the simulation-to-reality gap, and the absence of any shared benchmark, the robotics field is full of progress that's easy to overstate and hard to measure. "I hate to say this, but most of them are fake," says Roozbeh Mottaghi, a leading robotics and embodied AI researcher, of the viral humanoid robot videos. He joins host Anna Gressel to discuss how robots learn and what
The AI Drop #6: Training Day – AI and EU Copyright Trends with Lutz Riede
The EU is front and center in the discussion about copyright issues and technology, so host Anna Gressel invites colleague Dr. Lutz Riede to unpack the state of play for businesses operating that space. A Vienna-based partner who specializes in intellectual property and technology law, Lutz describes the biggest misconceptions that companies have about EU copyright law, high-impact litigation pend
The AI Drop #5: Looking East – How Asia Is Writing Its Own AI Rules with Rohit Bhat
When it comes to technology, Asian regulators have seemed to follow the lead of their EU and US counterparts. No longer. “With AI, it is transformational, and jurisdictions in Asia are taking note and wanting to ensure that this technology is used for the greater good of their respective society,” says Rohit Bhat. In this globe-trotting conversation with host Anna Gressel, he touches down in India
The AI Drop #4: Pulling Back the Curtain on Agentic AI, with Geoff Schaefer
Geoff Schaefer, vice president of AI Strategy and Governance at Leidos, returns to “The AI Drop” to unpack agentic AI strategy, the subject of his newest book. Host Anna Gressel leads off the conversation with a lightning round of questions such as the biggest surprises he’s seen, the number one skill that employees in an agentic workplace must have, and the value that AI agents are actually provi
The AI Drop #3: Check Engine Light – What Every Board Needs to Know About AI Oversight with Doru Gavril
Freshfields partner Doru Gavril remembers listening to the iconic radio show “Car Talk,” where the host would diagnose callers’ car problems. Host Anna Gressel takes the calls, and Doru diagnoses the caller’s AI ailment. Doru peeks under the hood to talk the callers through fixing their issues. Tune in to hear why – just like in “Car Talk” – the answer is often the "carburetor." And why companies
The AI Drop #2: Planning in Quicksand: Strategy Under Radical Uncertainty with Geoffrey Schaefer
"A good AI strategy is analogous to rebar and concrete," says Geoff Schaefer, making the case that AI should strengthen a company's existing differentiation — not replace the strategy itself. Geoff is the vice president of AI Strategy and Governance at Leidos, one of the largest companies operating at the intersection of defense, national security, and commercial technology.
The conversation with
The AI Drop #1: Of Bubbles and Busts - A Conversation on the Future of AI with Boris Feldman
Anna Gressel is joined by Boris Feldman to examine whether today’s AI boom represents a lasting transformation or a bubble, drawing key distinctions from the dot‑com era. They look ahead to what’s next for AI and explore what lessons history can teach us about the potential future of AI — and what is fundamentally new and different about the moment we are in now.
Introducing The AI Drop
Join host Anna Gressel to unlock the future of artificial intelligence with The AI Drop, a podcast dedicated to delivering cutting-edge insights on how AI is transforming industries worldwide. Each episode features expert interviews and actionable strategies to help you harness AI, drive business value, and navigate evolving legal challenges. Fresh drops every week so you never miss a beat.
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