Companies continue to hype up the ways artificial intelligence can enhance their businesses, and the government is taking notice. A Federal Trade Commission lawyer warned companies Monday against making misleading marketing claims about their AI ambitions and products, quipping that businesses “don’t need a machine to predict what the FTC might do when those claims are unsupported.”
Michael Atleson, an attorney with the FTC’s division of advertising practices, wrote in a blog post that “some products with AI claims might not even work as advertised in the first place,” adding that “for FTC enforcement purposes — false or unsubstantiated claims about a product’s efficacy are our bread and butter.” His warning comes amid frenzied interest in AI on Wall Street and elsewhere, fueled by the surging popularity of OpenAI’s ChatGPT chatbot, which ushered in a more popular understanding of what AI can do and how it can be harnessed in creative ways. After Microsoft Corp.
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incorporated that technology into its Bing search engine in an attempt to challenge Alphabet Inc.’s
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dominant search engine, companies across the spectrum have been jumping on the trend in hopes of similar attention. See also: Microsoft still has ‘a mo …