AI models could violate antitrust laws

Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Chairwoman Lina Khan said Wednesday that companies that train their artificial intelligence models (A) on data from news websites, artist creations or personal information could violate antitrust laws.

At the Wall Street Journal’s “Future of Everything Festival,” Khan said the FTC is studying ways that data scraping by big companies could hinder competition or potentially violate people’s privacy rights.

“The FTC Act prohibits unfair methods of competition and unfair or deceptive acts or practices,” Khan said at the event. “So you can imagine that if someone’s content or information is picked up and then it’s used in a way that competes with them and drives them out of the market and takes business away, in some cases that could be a problem. unfair competition method.

Khan said the concern also lies with companies using people’s data without their knowledge or consent, which can also raise legal issues.

“We’ve also seen a lot of concern about deception, unfairness, if companies make a series of claims when you sign up to use them, but then they secretly or discreetly use the data you give them – be whether it’s your personal data, whether it’s, if you’re a business, your proprietary data, your competitively meaningful data – if they then use it to power their models, to compete with you , to abuse your privacy, it can also increase legal problems,” she said.

Khan also acknowledged people’s concerns about companies retroactively changing their terms of service to allow them to use customer content, including personal photos or family videos, to power their AI models.

“I think that’s where people feel a sense of violation, that this isn’t really what they signed up for and often they feel like they have no recourse,” Khan said.

“Some of these services are essential to navigating everyday life,” she continued, “and so, if the choice – the ‘choice’ – presented to you is this: approve not just one endless surveillance, but whether the data is fed into these models, or they forgo using these services altogether, I think it’s a really difficult situation to put into place.

Khan said she believes many government agencies have an important role to play as AI continues to develop. the path.”

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