Adhi Sadu Gunawan

“When the AI Can Act, the Contract Has to Catch Up”

Adhi works with businesses deploying AI and Agentic AI that can do more than generate answers.

When a system can access customer environments, make decisions or carry out actions, the legal question changes. It is no longer only what does the software do? It becomes:

What is the AI allowed to do? When must a human approve it? What data can it use? Who carries responsibility when it acts? And where should the provider’s responsibility stop?

That is where Adhi is particularly strong.

His technical exposure to AI and software allows him to look beyond the wording of the contract and understand how the product actually behaves, what it can access, what it can decide, what it can execute and where things could go wrong.

He translates that behaviour into customer terms, approval points, data-use rules and limits on responsibility that businesses can use when selling and deploying advanced technology.

For technology companies, that matters because a contract that does not match the product can create a problem at exactly the wrong time: during enterprise procurement, customer due diligence, deployment or after the system has already acted.

Selected Experience

Customer-Facing Terms for Autonomous Agentic AI

Worked on the AI Terms of Service for an enterprise SaaS product using autonomous Agentic AI, where the system could go beyond generating output to accessing systems, making decisions and carrying out actions.

Adhi worked through the questions that ordinary software terms do not fully answer:

• what the AI was permitted to do;
• when human approval remained necessary;
• how customer data could be used;
• how responsibility should be divided where third-party models or infrastructure were involved; and
• where the SaaS provider’s responsibility needed to stop.

The objective was to ensure the customer-facing terms followed the real behaviour of the system, so the product could be sold and deployed without creating promises that did not match the technology.

For the business: advanced AI capability could be brought to enterprise customers with clearer limits around control, responsibility and risk.

AI-Powered e-KYC, Biometrics & Identity Verification

Worked on the privacy position and Record of Processing Activities for an AI-powered e-KYC product used in financial services, involving ID-document recognition, facial verification, liveness checks, anti-forgery controls and AI-based defenses against deepfakes and identity fraud.

Adhi mapped what data was collected, how it was checked, where it moved, which party controlled each step and who should carry responsibility if something went wrong.

A key part of the work was making sure the technology provider was not treated as responsible for processing, security failures or data incidents caused by another party’s systems, instructions or control.

For the business: the legal position followed the real product and data flow, reducing the risk that the provider would carry responsibility for something it did not cause or control.

Why His Technical Background Matters

Before joining private practice, Adhi worked with Sheffield Digital Justice on generative AI and the development of an AI-powered legal platform.

His work examined accuracy, bias, hallucination, transparency and digital accessibility - practical questions about what an AI system can do and what people can safely rely on it to do.

That experience is directly relevant to enterprise AI work today.

It means Adhi approaches an AI contract by asking not only “what does the clause say?”, but also:

“Does this actually match the technology?”

His work in this area also led to a speaking role at the Sheffield & District Law Society Legal Tech and AI Conference.

Adhi holds an LL.M. in Commercial and Corporate Law from the University of Sheffield, where his academic work included AI, UK contract law and the EU AI Act. His international transactional exposure also includes experience with White & Case in London.

Qualifications

• Certified GDPR Practitioner
• Certified Business Contract Drafter

Professional Memberships

• APPDI - Indonesian Data Protection Practitioner Association
• APKHBI - Indonesian Professional Consultant of Business and Law
• PERADI - Indonesian Bar Association
• Sheffield Alumni

Recognition

1st Winner - World Tourism Day 2021

The International Institute of Tourism & Business

Recognised for developing a legal and commercial approach to sustainable tourism during COVID-19 that brought together health, environmental and business requirements into a practical model for businesses and communities.