Artificial Intelligence, Advertising and Social Media

Artificial Intelligence, Advertising and Social Media Presented by: Dr Julia Hörnle (Professor of Internet Law) What Is Advertising? - Distinction Editorial Content vs Advertising - Advertising - Marketing and Sales Promotion Why Do We Regulate Advertising? - - Ads as consumer information must not be misleading • "Honest, truthful, not misleading" • Unfair consumer manipulation and consumer protection? • Protection from fraud, pyramid schemes etc. Ads for risky, unhealthy, addictive products • - Tobacco, alcohol, gambling, junk food Wider implications of advertising; POLITICAL? • E.g. Environmental protection, political advertising ("fake news"), sexist advertising - Protection of children - Vs Advertising as art and freedom of expression Soft Law Co- and Self-Regulation - Committee of Advertising Practice (CAP/BCAP) draws up Codes - Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) adjudicates - CAP/BCAP Codes • Broadcast/non-broadcast • Replicates all self-regulatory and legal provisions • General principles: legal, decent, honest • Co-regulatory: legal basis; Mathias Rath cases - How does the adjudication work? - Sanctions and Penalties - Serious harm? - Freedom of expression implications? - • Causing offence • (Best Climate Change Ad: Is there a happy ending?) Prohibition of Political Advertising "Hard" Law Regulation - EU Unfair Commercial Practices Directive 2005/29/EC - UK: Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008/1277 - Protects against fraudulent/misleading advertising, aggressive selling and undue influence (incl advertising) - Enforced by OFCOM/Competition & Markets Authority - Consumer protection legislation Online Advertising Explained - Six different forms of online advertising in the changed 21st century eco- system: 1. Digital display marketing (banner advertising, pop-ups), placed by ad exchanges/networks; 2. Search engine marketing (based on keywords or organic search optimization); 3. Advertising on social media (this is paid-for advertising offered and placed by the social media company itself, for example banners, pop-ups, posts, commercial tweets, video-clips before the main video on video-sharing sites etc., placed using an ad exchange/ad network); Online Advertising Is Completely Different - New ways of exploiting advertising completely different - Targeted advertising based on online profiling and manipulation? - Opaque use of commercial advertising in user- generated content on social media platforms • - INFLUENCER ADVERTISING CONTRADICTS: the traditional media distinction between editorial content and advertising - Opaque use of user-generated advertising - If advertising cannot be recognized as such, it cannot be regulated - ASA #Ad Rules: Labelling of Influencer Advertising - => INEFFECTIVE? - Example of gambling advertising - Needed: responsibility of social media companies - Drivers for profit • Advertising as dominant "free" content business model online, AVOD • Addiction??? UK Chief Medical Officer's Report on impact on Young People's Mental Health  PERSUASIVE DESIGNS Online Harms White Paper (Apr 2019) - • Attracting eyeballs & retaining them • Immersive environment • Constant play • Profiling Online Profiling • Tracing technologies: cookies, flash cookies, digital fingerprinting • Browsing patterns, consumption patterns, social media interests, postings, location data etc. etc. • Aggregated, big data • Data mining to infer characteristics, predict future behaviors • Artificial intelligence is used for data mining • Targeted advertising and influence=> make advertising more effective and costefficient - Artificial Intelligence • Ranging from face recognition tools to autonomous vehicles, search engines, translation tools and programs predicting price developments in stock markets • Major advantages for humankind, better prediction, medical advances, enhanced tools to fight crime & terrorism; environmental goals • Problem mismanagement of technology • Potentially the worst event in human history (Stephen Hawking) • Risk of conflict between the normative foundations of our civilization and factual use of Al (Kriebitz/Lütge) • Bundle of different technologies • Machines imitating different features of human intelligence: semantic text recognition (Siri, Alexa); voice recognition; face recognition; calculating the best route to a target; interpretation of the meaning of an image; decisionmaking; making plans etc. • Profiling: pattern recognition (STATISTICAL CO-RELATION) • Erg someone who likes this book usually likes this film or irrational and subliminal links (someone who is exposed to this color is more likely to buy this beer) • Undue influence conflicting with human autonomy? - The wider picture: big data, profiling, automated decision-making? - Cambridge Analytica scandal, use for political advertising and voter manipulation • EXAMPLES - Price discrimination - Discrimination - Information Commissioner's Office Fine of £500,000 against Facebook October 2018 (use of data analytics for political purposes) - Data Protection Issue? - GDPR and consent - Freemium model • Online gambling example: Mattha Busby "Revealed how gambling industry targets poor people and ex-gamblers", Guardian - Reviving consumer protection law? - About unfair manipulation?? - UK: Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008/1277 • Aggressive practices • Undue influence • Affecting consumer choice ("manipulation") Contradicts Three Fundamental Principles Of Advertising - Marketing communications must be obviously identifiable as such • CAP Code (Non-broadcast) Rules 2.1 and 2.3; BCAP Code (Broadcast) Rules 2.1 and 2.3; ICC Advertising and Marketing Communications Code (2018), Art 5; also, E- commerce Directive 2000/31/EC Art 6 (a) and (b) - Advertisers should not falsely claim or imply that they are acting as consumers • Regs 12, 13 Sch 1 Para 22 of the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations make it a criminal offence for a trader to pretend that they are acting as a consumer, see R v King (Scott) [2014] 2 Cr. App. R. (S.) - Advertising must not be misleading. • CAP Code (Non-broadcast) Chapter 3 and BCAP Code (Broadcast) Chapter 3; Reg 5 Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations; ICC Advertising and Marketing Communications Code (2018), Art 5 General Data Protection Regulation EU 2016/679 - General Data Protection Regulation EU 2016/679 - Fair and lawful processing principles - Informed consent or legitimate objective - Privacy by design/privacy by default - Inferences as private data - Transparency, explainability - BUT: too complex, too latent