US companies may find themselves under federal scrutiny if they \u201cquietly\u201d try to funnel customers\u2019 personal information into training artificial intelligence ,models, the government warned this week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The warning by the Federal Trade Commission, the nation\u2019s top privacy and consumer protection agency, highlights the enormous value of Americans\u2019 personal data. Troves of digital information already help Netflix determine what you might like to watch next, or help Amazon figure out what you\u2019re likely to buy, or help Google understand what shops are nearby.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now, however, much of that same information could be fed into ever more sophisticated AI models amid the rush to adopt a hot new technology, the FTC wrote in a blog post <\/a>Tuesday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cYou may have heard that \u2018data is the new oil,\u2019\u201d the agency said, referencing an adage describing the way personal information is a critical input powering the machinery of Big Tech. \u201cThere is perhaps no data refinery as large-capacity and as data-hungry as AI.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Many companies disclose how they use customer or user information in their privacy policies. But simply updating a privacy policy to say that a company will now use personal data collected for other purposes to train AI isn\u2019t transparent enough and could violate the law, the FTC said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Consumer protection regulators won\u2019t hesitate to crack down on companies \u201csurreptitiously re-writing their privacy policies or terms of service to allow themselves free rein to use consumer data for product development,\u201d the agency said. \u201cUltimately, there\u2019s nothing intelligent about obtaining artificial consent.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The blog post highlights how, amid a lack of congressional action to regulate AI, federal agencies are increasingly trying to apply existing law to AI\u2019s potential risks and harms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The FTC\u2019s guidance this week coincided with a warning Tuesday by Gary Gensler, the head of the Securities and Exchange Commission, that publicly traded companies risk violating US securities law if they mislead investors by overhyping what their AI tools can do, or if they say they use AI when truthfully they do not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The FTC has similarly warned companies <\/a>not to make overheated claims about AI, pointing to its powers <\/a>to enforce the Fair Credit Reporting Act, the Equal Credit Opportunity Act and the FTC Act, which authorizes the agency to go after \u201cunfair or deceptive practices,\u201d which can include false claims in marketing or privacy policies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Source: CNN<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" US companies may find themselves under federal scrutiny if they \u201cquietly\u201d try to funnel customers\u2019 personal information into training artificial intelligence ,models, the government warned this week. The warning by the Federal Trade Commission, the nation\u2019s top privacy and consumer protection agency, highlights the enormous value of Americans\u2019 personal data. Troves of digital information already […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2862,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,41,20],"tags":[855,856],"class_list":["post-2861","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","category-general-news","category-tech","tag-dont-use-americans-data-on-the-sly-to-train-ai","tag-ftc-warns-businesses"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fishfmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2861","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fishfmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fishfmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fishfmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fishfmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2861"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.fishfmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2861\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2863,"href":"https:\/\/www.fishfmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2861\/revisions\/2863"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fishfmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2862"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fishfmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2861"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fishfmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2861"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fishfmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2861"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}