Starting Sunday, conversations with chatbots, AI-generated photos or videos, and AI receptionists must immediately make clear that the system is artificial intelligence rather than a human.The requirement comes from the European Union's AI Act, the world’s first comprehensive law regulating the development and use of AI systems. The law took effect two years ago and is now being phased in. The stricter transparency rules that took effect Sunday are one of those stages.
This is great news! I’ve been complaining for years that one of the first pieces of legislation we should pass around generative AI is that humans should have a right to know they’re talking with a computer. You should never have to guess whether your talking to a human or bot.
A possible downside to this is that only legit companies will adhere to it, whereas scammers won’t include the assertion, giving people a false sense of security.
I’d say the benefits probably exceed the downsides, though. It also may mean that people start leaving companies that rely on AI for their support because of the increased transparency.
Scammers already do that so this is strictly better either way.
Though I do fear another cookie banner for the LLM age
Don’t forget: the current format of cookie nag banners are entirely the marketing industry acting out of petulance and deliberately making it a nuisance for users, in an attempt to gin up support for abolishing GDPR.
Plugins to the rescuuuuue!
That’s kind of part of criminals business plan not to comply with regulations…
So it’s not actually a downside. Just noise in the background for which we’ll need to cope with. Same companies were already impersonating banks or whatever so the use of AI really is just accessory.
On another hand, knowing when a company is using bots to interface with its customers or when AI is involved into decisions that can impact them that’s a strong benefit for us European.
Of course they won’t, which is why not identifying as AI is itself a new class of fraud and should be added to the other charges and punished as such.