Author

Venessa Phoa

Associate Director

Venessa specialises in technology transactions, data privacy, employment and intellectual property matters. She has extensive experience working closely with clients, many of whom are from the technology industry, on a broad spectrum of issues relating to regulation and compliance with the Personal Data Protection Act, Cybersecurity Act, Payment Services Act and online safety laws; commercialisation and licensing of software, carbon credits and intellectual property; and sensitive hiring, retrenchment and separation of employees.

With a background in art, Venessa also advises arts and culture organisations on employment, intellectual property and data privacy issues, particularly in relation to the organisation of public events and exhibitions and hiring of consultants.

Beyond practice, Venessa advocates for greater adoption of and education on technology within the legal industry.

Accolades:

Legal 500: Recommended for TMT in 2021 – 2022, “Highly rated by clients” in 2025 and “an integral member of the team” in 2026

Articles by Venessa Phoa

21 July 2026

Key Takeaways from New PDPC Advisory Guidelines on Use of Personal Data in Generative AI

The use of Generative AI models has become nearly ubiquitous in recent years. The capabilities of these models have rapidly improved due to, amongst other reasons, the use of user prompts and publicly available data for model training.