04/23/2024 | Press release | Distributed by Public on 04/23/2024 07:51
Last month we brought together a powerful cohort of consumer advocate groups, international organisations, business, government and civil society to call for Fair and Responsible AI on World Consumer Rights Day Friday March 15.
AI is changing how millions of us experience the online world. Within just five days of the release of ChatGPT last year one million had use the technology. Yet our campaign shone a light on the murky side of AI, including its impact driving misinformation and bias as well as verifiability issues.
Ahead of March 15 we led an exercise to home into these issue in AI chatbots that are used in online search. We wanted to test their efforts to protect consumers and their impact on trust. And we wanted to fill an important gap within current research - to see that the consumer voice was included. Thirty-five Members of Consumers International from across 19 countries joined the experiment and today we release our findings and next steps.
At present, regulation and accountability lags far behind AI development. Legislation is developing but it is vastly different across regions. For example, the EU's proposed AI Act emphasises fundamental rights and ethical considerations, while China prioritises economic growth and national security. The US relies more heavily on industry self-regulation. There are industry initiatives and coalitions to help drive accountability but these are hard to measure. Some businesses have gone solo in formulating their own AI principles.
The good news is that many countries already have the tools and remedies at their disposal to investigate and uphold and breaches of consumer protection laws. The United Nations Guidelines for Consumer Protection (UNGCP), housed at UNCTAD offer a critical foundation. The guidelines are deliberately broad and are not intended to comprehensively tackle the plethora issues in Generative AI. But they can be complemented by additional direct regulation that works in tandem to them.
Rens Dimmendaal & Banjong Raksaphakdee / Better Images of AI / Medicines (flipped) / CC-BY 4.0
We have developed four priority areas, which combine the UNGCP with a set of actions needed by developers and deployers of commercial generative AI to protect consumers. And we call on governments to work with Consumers International, UNCTAD and others to uphold them. Our priority areas include to: