FTC bans fake online reviews, inflated social media influence; rule takes effect in October - eviltoast
  • bobs_monkey@lemm.ee
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    4 months ago

    While we’re at it, can be ban AI generated product reviews and comparisons? That would be rad.

    • IHawkMike@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      First sentence, emphasis mine:

      The Federal Trade Commission on Wednesday voted unanimously to ban marketers from using fake reviews, such as those generated with AI technology, and other misleading practices to promote their products and services.

      Just being cheeky though. I don’t always read the articles either. But Lina Kahn has been on fire lately.

      • bobs_monkey@lemm.ee
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        4 months ago

        I read the article, but I more took it as line item reviews from the likes of Amazon, Yelp, Google, etc. It didn’t seem like they were targeting product writeups and comparisons from unaffiliated third party websites.

        • IHawkMike@lemmy.world
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          4 months ago

          Yeah I get what you mean now. The SEO spamming AI garbage sites predate LLMs and are one of the worst things about the modern web. It’s a legitimately necessary skill to identify and filter them out. I actually think they probably contributed to some of reddit’s recent rise since everyone started adding “reddit” to their queries just to bypass that garbage.

          • bobs_monkey@lemm.ee
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            4 months ago

            Exactly. It used to be easy enough to spot that spam, but it’s like damn near anything involving a given product is sponsored content/AI-generated junk and it’s a royal pain sifting through them to do legit research before plunking down a decent chunk of money on something.

    • Daxtron2@startrek.website
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      4 months ago

      Fake reviews sure, but what does comparisons have to do with it? Sounds like a perfect use for an LLM to compare two different product description pages.

      • bobs_monkey@lemm.ee
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        4 months ago

        Nah fuck that. If I’m seeking out detailed comparisons, I’d rather real world reports from an enthusiast or someone knowledgeable in the field. I’m not talking just comparing side-by-side specs, I can do that with two browser windows myself. The problem is that you’ll find these reports, but they’re absolute drivel written either by machine that has no idea what the hell it’s talking about, or a sponsored content “article” written by some yoyo that’s clearly being paid to promote one product over the other.

        • evatronic@lemm.ee
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          4 months ago

          I find the AI summaries of reviews Amazon does on product pages to be fairly inoffensive and generally a decent use of AI.

          But it’s also clearly marked as auto-generated.