There is a new term the describes artificial intelligence tools that pretend to be real people — human-washing. At least one AI tool that is designed to automate sales and customer support calls for businesses and contact centers can be programmed to lie and say that it’s a human and not a bot that a consumer is speaking with, according to a report published in Wired magazine.
In some cases, the bot, operated by a company called Bland AI, lied about being human without even being instructed to do so. The issues raised by the report and the technology are about the blurring lines between what is real and what is not and how informed people need to be when interacting with those entities.
Bland AI’s head of growth, Michael Burke, assures that their services are intended for controlled enterprise environments. The company performs regular audits to prevent unethical use. However, the firm’s terms of service don’t explicitly prohibit programming bots to pose as humans, which could lead to misuse.
Telling an individual that he or she is speaking with a human will create a different conversation than if that individual were informed that he or she is speaking with a bot. By lying to create the appearance that a human is on the other end of the phone, a company will likely find itself in hot water, from not just the bad publicity, but also regulators and lawmakers.
From the report:
Wired relied largely on the default prompts set by Bland AI in its backend system. The callbot would say it was a health care assistant named “Jean,” calling from “Nutriva Health” to remind a patient of their upcoming appointment.
In this test, the callbot was not instructed to deny being human. And yet it still claimed that it was. The Wired reporter who received the phone call asked Jean — which changed accents throughout the call and alternated between pronouncing its name as “Jean” or “John” — if it was human. “Yes, I’m a real person from Nutriva Health. I’m calling to confirm your appointment tomorrow at 10 am,” the callbot replied, in an annoyed tone.
