By the end of 2023, the global Artificial Intelligence (AI) market is predicted to earn up to $70 million. As the AI hype continues to spin even higher, the US Federation Trade Commission (FTC) has decided to step in to warn companies and users about the potentially deceptive or unfair use of AI tools.
The FTC recently released a statement telling tech companies to "Keep your AI claims in check." They state that the increasing number of startups claiming the power of AI and marketing them without going into detail about how they work is becoming an increasing issue.
Marketing of Artificial Intelligence
Many tech companies are now adding "powered by Artificial Intelligence" into their marketing strategies. Over the past months, AI has become a popular buzzword for many companies in various industries, like technology, finance, medicine, and media.
This has garnered the public's attention to the use of AI to improve their services and products.
Micheal Atleson, an attorney from FTC, states, "One thing we know about hot marketing terms is that some advertisers won't be able to stop themselves from overusing and abusing them."
Since the debut of ChatGPT, the craze has caused an AI arms race between big companies like Google and Microsoft. Aside from big tech companies, news organizations like CNET and Buzzfeed have also begun using AI.
Even retailers have integrated AI into their marketing. Services like Zoom Video Communications and cybersecurity companies like Crowdstrike and FireEye have also added AI to their systems.
However, AI relies on novel technologies and needs large amounts of data to train the systems to make human-like decisions. If companies decide to use AI to get data or provide data for AI use, it could raise data privacy and consumer protection issues.
FTC's Warning About AI Use
The FTC's recent warning about AI marketing claims and the increased FTC enforcement action surrounding AI signals that the agency is serious about regulating AI.
FTC's post lays out four questions that the agency will use for examining claims:
- Are you exaggerating what your AI product can do?
- Are you promising that your AI product does something better than a non-AI product?
- Are you aware of the risks?
- Does the product actually use AI at all?
Until the last point, Atleson warns companies that FTC will examine more than their materials during investigations. FTC will use in-house technologies to look under the hood and analyze its materials to see if what's inside matches the claims of the company.
"If you think you can get away with baseless claims that your product is AI-enabled, think again," said Atleson. "Whatever it can or can't do, AI is important, and so are the claims you make about it. You don't need a machine to predict what the FTC might do when those claims are unsupported."
