Can legal systems make sense of the agency of autonomous technologies through prior legal codes like intellectual property law (which requires a human author or inventor), torts (which traces liability for a wrong committed to a singular agent responsible for that wrong), and contract law (whereby two rational parties agree to certain terms)? This paper uses legal theory and scholarship on artificial intelligence (AI) and society to argue that current legal systems are as yet ill-equipped to regulate autonomous technologies, particularly in terms of understanding the nature of technological agency. As a result, courtroom disputes and legal jurisprudence attending to the rights and responsibilities of AI systems depend upon and amplify popular animistic discourse that positions AI systems as quasi-human entities worthy of legal rights. After reflection on the legal frameworks available to make sense of and regulate autonomous technology, this chapter investigates controversies around AI-generated patents in order to explore how the law both fails to account for new forms of technological agency and inadvertently reaffirms the power of AI as it is deployed to radically reconfigure various sectors of the contemporary information economy.