You may get your wish. The FTC posted an article about this a week ago. [1]
> The FTC Act’s prohibition on deceptive or unfair conduct can apply if you make, sell, or use a tool that is effectively designed to deceive – even if that’s not its intended or sole purpose.
It seems like an awfully broad rule? But they probably could go after this startup if they noticed it.
There are some kinds of businesses where making sure the regulators like what you’re doing is pretty much a prerequisite. On the other hand, plenty of companies got where they are today by pushing the limits.
Wow, this is a great article. Obviously writing is easier than enforcing, but I'm pretty impressed with whoever at the FTC is already thinking so clearly about this stuff.
The FTC consistently has one of the absolute best author voices in all of government. Pick a blog post at random and see what I mean. Their index on tech is probably the area you have the most domain knowledge in and so it’s probably the best area to evaluate them: https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/blog/term/1428
Clear, direct, confident, not overloaded with qualifiers, not afraid of metaphor, self-summarizing, signposting, and most importantly it always has an energy of some kind that government communication (in seeking to appear neutral) regularly lacks - having that energy is why it doesn’t feel “bland”. I wonder if they have internal documents to guide their writers, or if it’s mostly information stored in the heads of Lesley Fair and Michael Atleson (who between them seem write most - all? - of the posts).
Wouldn't fewer people having access make your proposed scenario less likely, regardless?
If other people continue to have access as well as the '3 letter agencies', the same power will still exists for the agencies, except that there will also be an essentially unlimited number of other people who could be used as scapegoats.
If only '3 letter agencies' have access, they would obviously be the first ones to come under scrutiny if a case of misuse were discovered.
Yes but people will continue generating meme recordings like the ones going around showing the recent POTUSs gaming dialogue. Thus showing everyone not to trust anything.
Without that, we'll just never know, and Joe Blow who never saw a deepfake of Joe Biden praising the stickiness of the latest OG Kush will trust anything.
> The FTC Act’s prohibition on deceptive or unfair conduct can apply if you make, sell, or use a tool that is effectively designed to deceive – even if that’s not its intended or sole purpose.
It seems like an awfully broad rule? But they probably could go after this startup if they noticed it.
There are some kinds of businesses where making sure the regulators like what you’re doing is pretty much a prerequisite. On the other hand, plenty of companies got where they are today by pushing the limits.
[1] https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/blog/2023/03/chatbots-...