The AI Drop

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. I

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 on

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

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 t

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

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 an

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 y

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 pat

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 di

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, Kohle

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 th

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

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

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

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

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 (Directo

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

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 t

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

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 jurisdictio