Last week, the Federal Trade Commission's Office of Technology and Division of Advertising Practices issued a joint warning to companies about “AI's potential for and real-world instances of harm.”  

In order to help prevent consumer harm, FTC staff encouraged brands to consider the following issues when developing, maintaining, using, and deploying AI-based products.

First, the FTC said that companies should take necessary steps to prevent harm before and after deploying a product.  The FTC explained that “companies offering AI models need to assess and mitigate potential downstream harm before and during deployment of their tools, which includes addressing the use and impact of the technologies that are used to make decisions about consumers.” 

Second, companies should take preventative measures to detect, deter, and halt AI-related impersonation, fraud, child sexual abuse material, and non-consensual intimate imagery.  

Third, companies should avoid deceptive claims about AI tools that result in people losing money or put users at risk of harm.  

Fourth, the FTC recommended that companies ensure privacy and security by default.  The FTC explained, “Generative AI tools require a massive amount of data inputs as part of the training process for large language models, among other types of AI models. Some of this data may be highly sensitive.” 

Warning companies that enforcement action may come, the FTC said, “they should be considering the risks to consumers that each of them carry in the here-and-now, and take steps to proactively protect the public before their tools become a future FTC case study.”