[Michael Atleson at the FTC Division of Advertising Practices]

"Don’t misrepresent what these services are or can do. Your therapy bots aren’t licensed psychologists, your AI girlfriends are neither girls nor friends, your griefbots have no soul, and your AI copilots are not gods."

The FTC gets involved in the obviously rife practice of overselling the capabilities of AI services. These are solid guidelines, and hopefully the precursor to more meaningful action when vendors inevitably cross the line.

While these points are all important, for me the most pertinent is the last:

"Don’t violate consumer privacy rights. These avatars and bots can collect or infer a lot of intensely personal information. Indeed, some companies are marketing as a feature the ability of such AI services to know everything about us. It’s imperative that companies are honest and transparent about the collection and use of this information and that they don’t surreptitiously change privacy policies or relevant terms of service."

It's often unclear how much extra data is being gathered behind the scenes when AI features are added. This is where battles will be fought and lines will be drawn, particularly in enterprises and well-regulated industries.

#AI

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