Contract Law and Computational Manipulation: AI and Consent in the Age of Hypernudging

This book addresses an underexplored issue in contract law: the legal implications of Computational Manipulation (CM), a form of AI-led influence also known as second-generation dark pattern that bypasses rational deliberation and targets decision-making processes. Although prohibited under Article 5 of the newly adopted EU AI Act, the impact of CM on contract law remains an under-researched legal grey area at the EU Member States' level, and even more in jurisdictions such as England and Wales, where the Act does not apply. This book takes an interdisciplinary approach, drawing on law, cognitive psychology, philosophy, and computer science to address the impact of persuasion, deception and manipulation used by an AI on the validity of a contract. It offers a critical and comparative analysis of the interaction between law and technology, and between law and society, from a contract law perspective. Using the English and Italian legal systems as case studies, the book argues that current contract law doctrines and consumer-oriented legislation in both Civil and Common Law traditions fail to adequately address this emerging threat to autonomy. It proposes legislative reforms and a new doctrinal approach that recognises the contractual motive as a relevant factor in consent formation. These solutions aim to protect what has been identified in recent literature as a new fundamental right: the right to mental self-determination—a potential neuro-right that safeguards the freedom to form thoughts without external interference from AI.