Madeline Harden
mh361519@ohio.edu
When thinking about truth and honesty in advertising, I recall false advertising cases, just like in the Volvo ad controversy where the car company faulty used a car with a reinforced roof for their ad involving a monster truck.
But as I continued my reading, I realized my most significant personal issue with ads: my phone was listening to me. I'm sure everyone has been scrolling through Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter, and they see an ad for the exact pair of shoes they were looking up on Google or just talking about. I could even just be thinking about getting a new pair of pants, and the minute I log into Instagram, there are ads for "cheap pants near me." Well, we are being listened to.
"The truth is, Facebook tracks us in ways many of us don't even realize and is so good at it, we think it's monitoring our conversations. But, instead, it uses sophisticated demographic and location data to serve up ads."
Rather than listening, companies and AI track. They track our searches, social activity, and even the emojis we use. Artificial intelligence may start to know us more than we know ourselves with robust processing and location data. Using our emotions against us to push their ads and get us to buy more products.
There need to be ethical considerations anytime when working with artificial intelligence.
An interesting question was posed in one of the readings, "for example, most would agree it's acceptable to leverage AI to target a consumer who shows interest in sports cars. But what if you also knew that the consumer was deep in debt and lacked impulse control, had multiple moving violations, and had a history of drug and alcohol abuse?"
AI is revolutionary and changing how we live our lives, but there must be guidelines when operating with something as old as ads and as new as artificial intelligence. There needs to be a system of transparency. Consumers need to be aware of the data being tracked or harvested. When ads are targeted, it needs to be clear that it is. Consumers deserve to be able to make informed decisions. And they also deserve the ability to opt-out when they like.
While advertisers' main goal is to make a profit, there needs to be a consideration of the social impact. Consumer rights above all.
Hi Madeline,
ReplyDeleteGreat blog post! I truly enjoyed learning more about truth and honesty in advertising from your perspective. I think that over the past several years, others have also thought about the issues related to our phones listening to us as you brought up. However, at least what I had heard in the past prior to being educated on it, was that there was no proof to actually back these claims up. You mentioned the example of Facebook within your blog post. This social media platform has been accused multiple times in the past for “listening” to their users. After partaking in this class, I now recognize that what this actually is their utilization of artificial intelligence. AI is a revolutionary advancement that allows insights to be made from our social media profiles and actions. Although this development is very useful to certain brands and platforms, it also raises questions regarding ethics. In my opinion, artificial intelligence as a whole is not something negative. However, if it used poorly by these brands and platforms, it does make me question the ethics behind the process. I certainly agree with you that consumer rights must come first.