FTC Report on AI: A Cautionary Tale: Combatting Online Harms Through Innovation | Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP – JDSupra
[co-author: Christina Barone]
On June 16, 2022, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) issued a report to Congress titled, “Combatting Online Harms Through Innovation,” examining whether artificial intelligence (AI) is a useful tool to combat the proliferation of harmful content online. As part of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2021 (P.L. 116-260), Congress tasked the FTC to conduct and complete a study on whether and how AI could be used to identify, remove or otherwise address a variety of specified “online harms.” The bill references deceptive, fraudulent, manipulated, misleading or illegal content and activities, citing examples such as deepfake videos, fake reviews, hate crimes, election-related disinformation, the illegal sale of opioids and product counterfeiting, among others.
The FTC’s report concludes that governments, platforms and other stakeholders must exercise great caution in mandating AI use, or over-relying on AI as a solution. In its report, the FTC also notes that the datasets supporting automated tools are often “not robust or accurate enough to avoid false positives or false negatives” or have difficulties identifying new phenomena when trained on previously identified data. The agency also remains concerned that the overreliance on such tools can result in censorship, bias and discrimination. The FTC further concludes that if AI is not the optimal solution, and if the scale makes meaningful human oversight challenging, other means, both regulatory and otherwise, should be explored in order to prevent these harms from spreading.
In exercising caution, the FTC recommends that Congress, regulators, platforms and scientists focus attention on several related considerations:
The FTC also warns that laws or regulations need to be carefully considered in the context of AI and online harms, while recognizing that its mandated use to address harmful content, including overly quick takedown requirements imposed on platforms, can be highly problematic and lead to additional harms. Among other concerns, the FTC highlighted that such mandates can lead to “overblocking” and put smaller platforms at a disadvantage, as well as conflict with the First Amendment.
Federal regulators and Congress continue to scrutinize and take action to ensure the responsible use of AI and other automated tools across web and mobile platforms. The Akin Gump cross-practice AI team continues to monitor forthcoming congressional, administrative and private-stakeholder and international initiatives in this area.