{"id":45132,"date":"2022-11-22T15:18:56","date_gmt":"2022-11-22T14:18:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.i-com.it\/2022\/11\/22\/focus-2-ai-chatbots\/"},"modified":"2023-05-13T21:36:41","modified_gmt":"2023-05-13T19:36:41","slug":"focus-2-ai-chatbots","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.i-com.it\/en\/2022\/11\/22\/focus-2-ai-chatbots\/","title":{"rendered":"Consumer protection in the digital age \u2013 Focus #2: AI & Chatbots"},"content":{"rendered":"

On 1 December 2022, I-Com<\/a>\u00a0and <\/strong>FTI Consulting <\/strong>will host the\u00a0roundtable \u201cProtecting EU consumers in the digital age\u201d<\/strong>\u00a0to discuss the Commission\u2019s \u201cDigital fairness \u2013 fitness check on EU consumer law\u201d initiative.<\/p>\n

The fitness check will evaluate three fundamental pieces of EU consumer policy legislation: the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive (UCPD), the Consumer Rights Directive (CRD), and the Unfair Contract Terms Directive (UCTD), to understand whether horizontal consumer law instruments remain adequate for consumer protection online, by looking at issues including dark patterns, personalisation practices, influencer marketing, marketing of virtual items and the addictive use of digital products, among others.<\/p>\n

Ahead of the publication of the public consultation on the fitness check and in parallel with the 2nd Annual Digital Consumer Event, this event provides an opportunity for relevant stakeholders to discuss consumer protection in the digital environment.<\/p>\n

This short article on AI used in Chatbots (AI Chatbots) is part of a series of publications that FTI Consulting and I-Com are developing to inform the public debate ahead of the event.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

The concept of AI Chatbots is a specific use-case of AI as a \u2018virtual assistant\u2019 or \u2018intelligent personal assistant\u2019, which is a software agent that can perform tasks (see\u00a0expert.ai<\/a>,\u00a0Aisera<\/a>). This is a key advancement in the tech landscape, used by many businesses because it streamlines communication between humans and machines.<\/p>\n

AI Chatbots are software programs that are trained to have human-like conversations using Natural Language Processing (NLP) capabilities (see\u00a0Drift<\/a>). With NLP, AI chatbots can interpret written human language, detect the intent of a query that a user inputs and provide the best response. Questions posed via a dialogue box on a website can be answered automatically by a chatbot. AI chatbots help make customer service more efficient, as they learn from each conversation with customers. As it relates to site visitors, they adapt their responses to different situations and provide personalised responses. They are also available 24\/7 and are able to respond to customers immediately.<\/p>\n

AI chatbots are an example of how automated decision-making systems (ADM systems) are used in our daily lives. According to some stakeholders, the issue is that ADM systems can be opaque; they do not necessarily lead to more objective or neutral decisions, as the results are often unfair and even discriminatory (see\u00a0Algorithm Watch,<\/a>\u00a0June 2022).<\/p>\n

There are a whole host of issues when we look into this from a consumer perspective:<\/strong><\/p>\n