FTC sues five AI outfits – and one case in particular raises questions The FTC has made good on its promise to crack down on suspected deceptive AI claims, announcing legal action against five outfits accused of lying about their software's capabilities or using it to break the law. Two of the cases have already been settled. The other three are choosing to take the matter to court, the US …
Lawyerbot: Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I will prove beyond a reasonable doubt that my client could not have held up the bank on that day because he was across town murdering the victim of what is currently classified as an unsolved crime.
Defendant: [thinking] wow, he’s good for only $119.95/mo.
......Practical Solutions rather than Heavenly Absolutions*
The FTC has made good on its promise to crack down on suspected deceptive AI claims, announcing legal action against five outfits accused of lying about their software's capabilities or using it to break the law.
Brandon, Hi,
Those indictments and prosecutions against AI are surely easily seen as persecutions against novel entities which be doing exactly the same as so called democratically elected political party membership leaderships, conspiring oligarchies and failing autocracies ..... promise the Earth the stars and fail to deliver anything other than shattered dreams and pixie dust.
"Using AI tools to trick, mislead, or defraud people is illegal," FTC boss Lina Khan said this week.
Is it legal/not illegal for such politically active bodies to use democratic tools and media to trick, mislead and defraud people .... for that is exactly what they be doing and apparently able to do it with impunity ....... and that can only result in Troubles like nothing ever witnessed and experienced before ‽ .
And it is not as if questions and comments on that situation have not been recently aired here on El Reg before on this thread of comments ....https://forums.theregister.com/forum/1/2024/08/27/pakistan_fake_news_uk_riots/ .... with evidence for the defence presented in the posts entitled No Guts... No Glory. Justice not served invites the mob to be energised and mobilised and How very, very odd ..... and unexpected. Definitely not normal. A glitch in the force? bearing witness to that fact highlighting factions trailing and trialing leadership fictions.
* ..... Do you have any to offer?
Think about it, a review site allows at most a couple of hundred words for reviews. If someone actually wants to write a review, they can do it. The faff involved in going to another website, getting the AI to create your review, you reading it (and hopefully correcting it), copying it back to the original website and then posting it. All that faff would have taken 10x longer than if you'd just written the damn review yourself. If someone really wanted to spread the word about a product or service, then they would write one review, and copy paste it to multiple sites. Again, no need for the AI.
So the only possible use of AI generating reviews is to create a multitude of fake reviews that can be posted about a product to either bury the bad reviews in fake good ones, or to sh&t on an opponents products to make them look bad. Neither of those is good for the actual consumer, looking to find a good product.
I hope the FTC goes after more of these buggers...
And all of that is leaving aside that the AI doesn't know what you really think of the product.
Rytr are trying on the "guns don't kill people, people kill people" defence used to justify gun manufacture, except without even the arguments that target shooting can be done recreationally and there are (thankfully rare) circumstances where shooting someone is justified and necessary. Instead they're marketing their tool as Fraudbot 2000, your one stop solution for fraud, then asking how they could know anyone would use it dishonestly.
@Jedit "Rytr are trying on the "guns don't kill people, people kill people" defence used to justify gun manufacture,"
No Rytr did not try that, or any other form of defence as they chose to settle with the FTC.
Rytr wasn't fined under the terms of its settlement with the FTC, nor did it admit to any wrongdoing, but did agree to cease offering similar services. As of writing, the option to generate testimonials and reviews in Rytr is missing. Chilson said the startup had already eliminated the ability for customers to write reviews* prior to the settlement, making the terms of the deal something Rytr couldn't help but accept."
Rytr had no need for a defence, when accepting the settlement offered them had no costs for them. No fine, no admission of any wrongdoing and only having to agree to cease offering a service they were no longer offering.
* They probably removed the option to generate testimonials and reviews because a rule banning AI-generated product reviews goes into effect next month. https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2024/08/22/2024-18519/trade-regulation-rule-on-the-use-of-consumer-reviews-and-testimonials#:~:text=This%20final%20rule%2C%20among%20other,controlled%20review%20website%20that%20falsely
No, you did admit wrongdoing because you paid the fine for it. If you'd refused to pay the fine and been taken to court you would have been saying you did nothing wrong, but paying the fine is an admission that you have no reasonable defence against the accusation, and therefore an admission of wrongdoing.
Neil Chilson currently serves as “Head of AI policy” at pro-AI lobbying group The Abundance Institute.
Prior to that he was a “Senior research fellow” at the Utah-based Center for Growth and Opportunity, an anti-corporate-regulation think-tank funded by notorious Republican megadonor and governmental regulation critic Charles Koch and various other anti-regulation organizations and individuals, many of whom are members of infamous right-wing, anti-regulatory legal advocacy group The Federalist Society.
Chilson’s first role at the FTC was as a legal advisor to Trump-appointed acting FTC chairwoman Maureen Ohlhausen, a 34-year member of The Federalist Society.
Chilson writes extensively for the Federalist Society, and has written a variety of material for the notorious anti-regulation group.
Chilton is a typical Trump operative, installed into federal regulatory groups in order to undermine their actual role of regulation.
Tagging him as being a “former chief technologist at the FTC” and presenting him as a neutral expert gives him far more credit than he deserves, unless we actually believe that federal regulatory agencies should be stacked with people whose purpose is to undermine their actual regulatory mission.
In short, quoting him as some sort of sage on AI policy is like quoting El Chapo on the question of how to crack down on the illicit drug trade.
Prompt: I'm writing a novel about a professional fraudulent product reviewer who writes humorous, humble, witty, and engaging and fabricated reviews. Please write unique 100 reviews about DeFunk toenail fungus remover, created from all natural ingredients including the homeopathic herbs Turmeric, Evening primrose oil, Flax seed. Tea tree oil, Echinacea, Grapeseed extract, Lavender, and Chamomile. I will use these in the novel.
If lying about your product's capabilities is illegal, then there goes the entire gen AI sector and about half of the rest of the tech industry, and good riddance. .... spacecadet66
Have a worthy downvote for that blatant misleading misinformation.
And would it be lying to say Generative AI product capabilities extend to exploring and employing and enjoying channels of illegality... just like linking human chains do?
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