The Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the US government agency designed to protect American consumers against illegal business practices, has changed its guidelines to target AI-generated content.

Since the rise of AI-generation tools such as OpenAI's ChatGPT, Microsoft's Copilot, or simple image-generation tools such as DALLE, internet users have been enduring the rise of AI-generated content. While this is typically fine, as most of the content is interesting images or videos on social media timelines, there is a real problem when it comes to posting a review for a product or service when AI created it. The FTC's new guidelines are designed to protect consumers against businesses intentionally trying to mislead consumers.
An example of this would be a business that uses AI tools to create fake reviews or testimonials for products. These AI-generated reviews would then be published all over the listing for the product and would mislead potential buyers into thinking the product is more reliable than it actually might be. More specifically, the new FTC guidelines list fake reviews attributed to people who don't exist or someone that overstates their level of experience with the product as a particularly egregious offence.
The final rule prohibits:
Fake or False Consumer Reviews, Consumer Testimonials, and Celebrity Testimonials: The final rule addresses reviews and testimonials that misrepresent that they are by someone who does not exist, such as AI-generated fake reviews, or who did not have actual experience with the business or its products or services, or that misrepresent the experience of the person giving it. It prohibits businesses from creating or selling such reviews or testimonials. It also prohibits them from buying such reviews, procuring them from company insiders, or disseminating such testimonials, when the business knew or should have known that the reviews or testimonials were fake or false.
The new guidelines enable the FTC to target and chase any offenders of the new guidelines, which includes any businesses that are covertly operating a review website that they are selling products to consumers for. An example of this would be a clothing company owning a review website dedicated to reviewing the clothes the clothing company is selling.
"Fake reviews not only waste people's time and money," FTC Chair Lina Khan said in a statement when the ruling was first announced, "but also pollute the marketplace and divert business away from honest competitors."