AI & Advertising, A Consumer Perspective
Digital advertising is a booming industry: worth over $300 billion in 2019 alone. It’s also the primary business model sustaining the internet, humanity’s most important communications tool. But as AI-powered advertising grows more pervasive and sophisticated, it is doing so without guardrails. There are few rules to ensure it doesn’t surveil, misinform, or exclude consumers. If the industry doesn’t undergo major reform, these problems will only grow more pronounced.
Twenty years ago, digital ads were little more than online billboards — pop-ups that didn’t know who was seeing the ad, or why.
But today’s AI-powered digital advertisements are exponentially more sophisticated. The technology behind these ads can profile consumers and segment them into precise audiences, or make assumptions that cause discrimination. Or serve ads based on the emotion detected on their face; even as they sit in their own homes.
Advertising is the dominant business model financing our digital spaces, giving consumers around the world “free” access to products and services. This is an effective deal for advertisers, and highly lucrative for platforms. But there are grave harms, and consumers bear the brunt of them.
My report, “AI & Advertising: A Consumer Perspective,” was developed over 10 months, via interviews and workshops with those across the global advertising, consumer protection and digital rights spheres. Using the Consumers International ‘Digital Trust Framework’ as a baseline, and leveraging research from the UN, The Conscious Advertising Network, and Avaaz among others, I identified seven major threats that AI-powered ads present to consumers, from discrimination to misinformation. Many of these harms will be fundamentally changed or exacerbated by the addition of machine learning, or emotional recognition to ad creation and targeting, particularly in countries without data protection legislation. Some of the most disturbing findings include:
- Evidence of patents which would allow facial data to be created and stored via home televisions and used to target ads
- Online scams optimised via machine learning, or deepfake technology
- A total lack of consumer agency in the face of algorithmic decision making, which will be exacerbated by machine learning
- The resurrection of debunked science, such as phrenology, via facial recognition startups
- A huge environmental toll, if AI is introduced to advertising without a plan to reduce its carbon footprint
This research also uncovered a multitude of initiatives, law-suits, products and technologies aimed at fixing or combatting these harms, but a lack of proactive planning for an AI enhanced advertising future. There is currently a lack of co-operation between the advertising industry and those working in consumer protection and human rights which must be swiftly rectified in order to properly track and define the human impacts of new adtech. For example, where advertisers define issues such as declining trust, their conclusion is that fixing ad bombardment is the solution, rather than limiting the use of personal data, tackling scams or defunding online hate speech and misinformation.
Alongside the absence of data protection legislation in many markets, lack of cross-sector collaboration is a critical issue holding back progress. Cross-disciplinary, mediated forums must be created, comprising digital rights groups, consumer protection experts, funders, publishers and advertisers. Greater collaboration would result in sharper problem definition, as well as better solutions to the issues degrading our online world. These forums should ensure human and consumer rights protection by design in AI-powered advertising, identifying harms and creating new initiatives to solve them as they evolve.
As co-chair of The Conscious Advertising Network for the past two and a half years, I have watched these kind of forums lead to brilliant results around issues from hate speech and misinformation, to advertising fraud. The best solutions are created when NGOs or campaigners work together with advertisers and platforms to identify and suggest solutions to societal issues. The work of this collective, for example, has resulted in 6 manifesto roadmaps to help advertisers:
- Identify and defund hate speech and m/disinformation
- Consider informed consent beyond GDPR
- Ensure children’s welfare
- Consider diversity & inclusion in advertising creation and placement
- Combat advertising fraud, which funds organised crime
In addition, the UN now recognises the role of advertising in funding hate speech and disinformation, while advertisers now use UN definitions of hate speech when considering what sites their advertising appears on. Consumer protection has not yet been a focus of groups such as CAN, but there is room for this to be the case in the future, and there is a pressing need for forums such as this to develop in global markets.
This is where Consumers International members, and digital rights groups come in. Your expertise, drive and commitment to consumer protection would form a vital part of these forums. I’m running webinars to explore some of the themes discussed in the report during October. Please do get in touch with me if you’d like to attend with suggestions of what you might like to cover.
Sign up for a webinar to explore the report findings further
Get in touch at hello@harrietkingaby.com
