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California law banning bots from pretending to be real people without disclosure

• Fjolsvith 7y ago
  So much for Dr. Eliza. http://www.drdobbs.com/chatboteliza/199101503 http://www.drdobbs.com/chatboteliza/199101503 https://www.cyberpsych.org/eliza/ https://www.cyberpsych.org/eliza/
  • 14 7y ago
    I don't think this spells an end to Dr. Eliza. From what I understand, it only has to be made known that it is a bot. The fact that Dr. Eliza is very clearly a bot from the get go makes it completely legit. I do however wonder about Ashley Madison as it was made evident that a lot of the woman on the site were just bots. Yes the bots are just there to talk to the men but they are there from the company to entice the men to upgrade their membership and pay so it seems to me this would make them fall under this law.
  • ipsin 7y ago
    https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=201720180SB1001 https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml... It's prohibited from trying to sell you something or influence your vote, but Eliza doesn't do either of those things...
• inlined 7y ago
  Political ads on tv require disclosure. I see no reason disclosure rules shouldn’t apply on internet campaigns of all forms.
• scarejunba 7y ago
  If I make a generated face that speaks my stuff with a generated voice, is it a bot?
  • llukas 7y ago
    Yes. Same as program you write to do "your stuff" is not you.
  • smt88 7y ago
    No, much the way Stephen Hawking's voice was not a "bot", nor would someone playing a song on a digital keyboard be considered a "music bot". In both cases, there is no meaningful automation -- just a digital instrument creating sounds out of a human's intent.
  • scarejunba 7y ago
    Well, amusing that people thought this was wholly irrelevant. Here's what I was thinking of when I said that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksb3KD6DfSI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksb3KD6DfSI Also amusing that there are two confident opposite opinions in response.
    • TeMPOraL 7y ago
      What does this video montage you linked have to do with computer-generated faces speaking computer-generated voices?
      • scarejunba 7y ago
        It's the same content. Different people with different voices. You could have it sound like you have your local folks giving you info when instead it's from some centralized location. I could control a message without it being a single guy saying it all.
• mirimir 7y ago
  > Violators could face fines under state statutes related to unfair competition. I doubt that anyone running bots, and who is technically competent, will be identifiable or findable. I mean, I could do it, and I'm just a random anonymous coward.
  • luckylion 7y ago
    Depends. At some point, you're creating fake humans that are so deep under cover that nobody can tell them apart from real humans. When you achieve that, are they still bots? I've also often thought that the cheap bots are easily identifiable (tweeting every 3 minutes, 24/7/365) and that a better bot shouldn't be that hard to build, but then again, I've figured somebody to be a bot that actually wasn't, he was just very invested in the topic and had plenty of time on his hands.
    • mirimir 7y ago
      That's an interesting point. I mean, why are they worried about 100K bots when 100K mechanical turk workers could do the same stuff.
  • freefolks 7y ago
    Does this mean you will continue to do so knowing you will be breaking the law?
    • mirimir 7y ago
      Well, I never said that I would, just that I could. Just as a way of saying that anyone competent could. Also, "breaking the law" is an ambiguous thing. I mean, that's one of my favorite Judas Priest cuts, and he was talking about breaking laws against homosexuality. Not that most head-bangers realized it, at the time. Also, just about every US media company breaks Saudi laws against sinful use of sexual images. And nobody seems to worry much about it.
  • zhte415 7y ago
    Follow the money.
• AnthonyMouse 7y ago
  That will be a fun one to interpret. So if I use autocorrect, am I a bot? What if the device makes next word suggestions and I use them? What if the device suggests the entire post, but I manually approve it? What if it suggests five separate posts and I approve them all at once?
  • asutekku 7y ago
    I wouldn’t classify that as a bot as there’s still human interaction required.
    • AnthonyMouse 7y ago
      So a bot farm is fine as long as you have a human intern there rubber stamping whatever content it generates?
      • freefolks 7y ago
        As long as it is fully disclosed that your bots are bots.
      • spiznnx 7y ago
        I think this is generally how election texting campaigns work, in terms of human interaction required when I once tried it, due to laws against robocampains. A real human has to press a button for each text sent and then receive any replies. Probably for online, similarly one post would be allowed for each individual human approval, unless you ad the bot disclaimer.
      • croon 7y ago
        Am I missing something or wouldn't you need one real human per bot for rubberstamping? I'm sure this is targetting bots pretending to be humans that do not exist. If you want to be personally responsible with your real face and name for everything your singular bot writes, that would still solve nearly all current bot problems.
        • 7y ago
• frigfog 7y ago
  Well, at least the Turing test is solved.
  • johnlbevan2 7y ago
    Haha, that was my first thought too... Unless companies start asking all human employees to start claiming that they're bots so as to subvert the new rule... there's not a law against that yet.
• dessant 7y ago
  I felt stupid, but I have fallen victim to this on dpd.com while tracking a package. A helpful chat popup has appeared where I could request assistance from a support agent, but it was not disclosed that the agent is a bot. Needless to say I have spent a couple of minutes repeatedly asking a question, and even rephrasing it while being frustrated that this person does not seem to grasp my issue.
  • WalterBright 7y ago
    Those are fairly easy to spot. One dead giveaway is their excessively chirpy voice. Or, as you did, just say something that puts them off script.
    • wpietri 7y ago
      Currently they're fairly easy to spot -- if you work in tech, anyhow. A lot of money will be put into making them harder and harder to spot. I'm glad to see this law come at the beginning of that process, so there isn't an established industry that can put money into fighting it.
    • luckylion 7y ago
      > Or, as you did, just say something that puts them off script. I don't know about that. Does Amazon's support use bots? Or are they just in a remote call center using auto translate to communicate with customers? Because in general, they appear like bots to me: they will parse for key words and reply to those, ignoring context and subtle differences that make their replies sound weird.
      • WalterBright 7y ago
        I doubt it would be better than their email reply bot, which is transparently inept. I wouldn't mind an email bot if it got me what I needed, but it was useless.
      • viraptor 7y ago
        > Does Amazon's support use bots? Depends on the section of Amazon. AWS enterprise support does not.
• sneak 7y ago
  Bots are communications tools configured and deployed by human beings, at least until they can pass the Turing Test. Human beings have human rights to express themselves however they wish.
  • icebraining 7y ago
    > Human beings have human rights to express themselves however they wish. No. Commercial speech usually has disclosure requirements, even in the US (see the Zauderer case), which humans have to follow. This is just another case of compelled commercial speech.
  • pixl97 7y ago
    Really I would say at this point any Turing test that can catch bots 100% of the time will also incorrectly identify some portion of people as bots.
• deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
• arunbahl 7y ago
  What are the implications of this on the Turing Test?
  • arendtio 7y ago
    IANAL, but AFAIK no machine living in or interacting with someone in California can complete the Turing Test without breaking the law. A simple question like 'Who should I vote for?' would cause the machine to either answer with the compliant 'Please note, I am not a human being...' or with some illegal comment about the democratic process. Maybe that law requires an additional paragraph, stating that humans participating in a Turing Test should also identify themselves as bots ;-)
• throwaway13337 7y ago
  California is setting a dangerous precident. If individual states each enact individual laws governing the internet, then only large companies will have the resources to follow them. We'll see a balkanization of the web wherein it's no longer very world wide. Small internet businesses will become harder and harder to start. Big monopolies will become entrenched. It's not pretty.
  • sdoering 7y ago
    Or companies start acting like a sane person would. Not outsourcing communication to a bot without disclosure for example. And do so globally. Or taking the European GDPR regulations as an example actually caring a little bit more about the user' data and enabling informed consent.
    • hajhatten 7y ago
      Agreed, when are you enforcing Article 11/13 in the US? /s
      • sdoering 7y ago
        Actually Article 11 is in effect in Germany. Article 13 also.
    • bufferoverflow 7y ago
      GDPR is absolutely insane. I was working on a European website where a user would upload a product info along with a photo of the product. I had to abandon it, because I'd have to somehow filter all uploaded content for copyright and other violations, as I'd be liable under this new law.
      • random_moonwalk 7y ago
        Ah, I think you're referring to the recent EU copyright directive (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directive_on_Copyright_in_the_Digital_Single_Market https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directive_on_Copyright_in_the_...) rather than GDPR.
• jlangenauer 7y ago
  I am reminded of Thoreau's quote: "There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root." The root of the problem is not that we have bots, but that we have normalised lying and deception as part of everyday business. We allow companies to pretend that bots are human beings, and allow call-center employees in third-world countries to pretend (even sometimes though elaborate lying) that they are located in the same country as you. We allow companies to tell outrageous untruths in their advertising - see the Samsung ad which they're currently being hauled over the coals for in Australia. That's the real problem here, and the one we need to fix on a general level, not by band-aid regulations over whichever dishonesty has managed to irritate enough state representatives.
  • TeMPOraL 7y ago
    Strongly agreed. I didn't want to post yet another "reason #651235 why I loathe adtech" comment, but that's really it. Bots pretending to be people wouldn't be of interest at this level if it was just criminals trying to scam people - it would be just another type of crime. This is a problem because of the almost-fraud tactics of sales and marketing that, for some reason, happen to be on the right side of the legal line. I suggest we move that line to solve this problem.
    • crankylinuxuser 7y ago
      Ad: It does EVERYTHING!!!! 2pt font on page 14: Except this page of exclusions, and conflicting exclusions, and the fact the company can add any of their choosing at any time without notice.
      • athenot 7y ago
        Many ads have in tiny print "for illustration purposes only, do not attempt", ie. when showcasing some fantasy use-case of the product. That copy should really be "for deception purposes only".
    • Will_Parker 7y ago
      > Bots pretending to be people wouldn't be of interest at this level if it was just criminals trying to scam people How about foreign agents trying to influence elections at scale, or inciting civil unrest?
• mashego 7y ago
  ️ ️
• buboard 7y ago
  But what about humans posing as bots?
• repolfx 7y ago
  I really hate this stuff. The article starts out with a paragraph of complete nonsense: "When you ask experts how bots influence politics—that is, what specifically these bits of computer code that purport to be human can accomplish during an election—they will give you a list: bots can smear the opposition through personal attacks; they can exaggerate voters’ fears and anger by repeating short simple slogans; they can overstate popularity; they can derail conversations and draw attention to symbolic and ultimately meaningless ideas; they can spread false narratives." Since when can bots "smear the opposition through personal attacks"? Bots that post the same stuff written by humans over and over have existed for years and are easily filtered out by spam filters - bulk spam doesn't change people's politics anyway so in practice such bots are always advertising commercial products. Bots that constantly invent new ways to smear the opposition don't yet exist, not even in the lab. This whole story is asserting that there are programs routinely running around the internet indistinguishable from humans, making points so excellent they successfully persuade people to switch their political affiliation, which is simply false. In the article the word "experts" is a hyperlink. I was very curious what kind of bot expert might believe these fantasies. To my total lack of surprise the link goes to a single "expert" who in fact knows nothing about AI, bots or technology in general - they're a political flak who worked for the Obama campaign and studied a PhD in "communication". This sort of manipulative deception is exactly why so many people no longer trust the media. The New Yorker runs an article that starts by asserting a fantasy as expert-supported fact, and then cites a member of the Obama campaign who went into social science academia (i.e. a field that systematically 'discovers' things that are false), and who has no tech background or indeed any evidence of their thesis whatsoever. My experience has been that actual experts in bots are never approached for this sort of story.
  • michaelt 7y ago
    This whole story is asserting that there are programs routinely running around the internet indistinguishable from humans, making points so excellent they successfully persuade people to switch their political affiliation, which is simply false. The theory isn't that bots are artificial general intelligences trying to convince individuals with clever intellectual debate. The theory is bots try to move the Overton Window [1] - to change what the average person thinks the average person thinks - by making certain opinions/arguments appear more prominent by repetition. A bot doesn't need to be an AGI - or even capable of responding to replies to its own posts. All it needs to do is keep 100 accounts in good standing with reposts and low-effort comments, then every hundred posts or so a human operator jumps on to make a driveby comment like "LOL give it up Mickey Mouse is never going out of copyright" or "LOL we get it you vape" or "LOL it's the government, what did you expect?" or "LOL like America hasn't done the same thing but much worse" in an appropriate thread. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window
• shultays 7y ago
  Some companies use bots for their support twitters. Samsung for example had a twitter bot that replies everyone https://twitter.com/SamsungSupport/status/1140415146675728384 https://twitter.com/SamsungSupport/status/114041514667572838... And it even uses a human name. Really dishonest.
• alexheikel 7y ago
  I can say that people like humans way better than bots. We have an app that looks like a bot but is a real person, and we say it at the beginning, but people don’t believe. Once they figure it out, they go crazy. It’s always local people by the way. So I think at some point, bots should be at least explain what they are without pretending they are humans.
• CM30 7y ago
  Of course, this all raises the question of whether there are only unethical use cases for bots pretending to be human, or whether a law like this could hit benign uses for bots as well. For instance, ARGs could have bot accounts for fictional characters on social media sites. These accounts could give pre recorded messages that then hint that the user should visit some third party site for more clues or information. Is that legally dubious? I can see it being so under this law, but I don't think it's comparable to a business running say an automated chat support system and pretending its bots are human. Same goes with roleplaying bots on online community sites. These aren't a huge thing right now, but they could be in future, with accounts that act like NPCs do in video games or interact with the players account in side quests or what not. These don't seem like they'd be morally 'wrong' things to have on a site, but they'd probably get hit by this law regardless. Point is, these types of bots don't necessarily only have dodgy use cases.
  • tablethnuser 7y ago
    In these gaming use cases the bots can be appropriately disclosed without getting in the way of the game. A couple decades ago there was an ARG about government conspiracies which called your house to give you clues from in-game characters and it started with a 4th wall breaking preamble so that if someone not playing answered the phone they wouldn't get worried. The game was still fun. IIRC you could go into the settings and disable the preamble, which would be a fine place in the UX to disclose the bots and capture the user's agreement. Unfortunately for the game (and the world), 9/11 happened a few months after launch and due to the theme of the game it was shut down. Now it's just an interesting bit of gaming history! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Majestic_(video_game) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Majestic_(video_game)
  • deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
• vinniejames 7y ago
  So this disclosure will now be required with all robocall spam calls?
  • bshacklett 7y ago
    Aren't those already illegal, but just a nightmare to track down for enforcement?
    • deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
• modernerd 7y ago
  Welcome to the Fifth Annual Californian Turing Test Chatbot Hackathon! This time we've had to introduce some changes to abide by new state legislature. Messages entered into the chat console must be followed immediately by the string " [I am a bot]", whether you are a bot or a human, but especially if you are a human. Good luck and have fun!
  • xamuel 7y ago
    New addition to every EULA: "XYZ Corp is a member of the Rand-Turing coalition, an industry cooperative dedicated to the philosophical belief that all human beings are robots. Based on this, every interaction you have with us will be an interaction with a robot. By signing this license agreement you agree that all members of our corporation from the lowest janitor up to the CEO, are all robots."
• zn44 7y ago
  what about people pretending to be bots?
• Proven 7y ago
  They're not banning bots from pretending, bots don't have a mind of their own. They are disallowing people from running unlabeled public-facing bots.
• sjg007 7y ago
  It’s a start, it should cover Facebook and Google.
• ourmandave 7y ago
  As if millions of Facebook accounts cried out in terror, and were suddenly silenced.
  • 0xffff2 7y ago
    As if millions of Facebook accounts kept right on going because none of the people running them are in California and Facebook has no incentive to actively police them.
• sailfast 7y ago
  “Bots are not people” - ok, but if they’re written by people for a specific intent meant as speech, is that no longer protected speech? If I program a bot to chant slogans on Twitter, isn’t that something I’d have the right to do? I’d argue yes, but where they may have an argument is where I respond “no I am human” if people ask me about being a bot - intentionally misleading. They may have more luck here in the commercial space where they can better regulate and enforce these ruleS like advertising and other sales practices. Not sure where this goes in politics or other domains at all in terms of enforeceability.
• wickedlogic 7y ago
  Bots are going to be the way we interact with the web (and really all systems) heading forward, this 'real people' at just 'browsers' is quite a misunderstanding of what a 'user-agent' really means in this day and age. If I launch a new tab in the background and tell it go establish some set of factors for me, or locate price points and details for me, or buy something for me (and right now as me)... or just have it let me browser and interactively direct it but have it block ads as I go. I know the law, and lawmakers, are looking at this from a fraudulent content perspective, but they are going to be hard pressed to do anything in long run to quell this.
• unreal37 7y ago
  This will bring the end of Twitter. A website where 75% of the content is bots.
  • lajawfe 7y ago
    No, Twitter just needs a switch that will display 'posted by a bot' in place of 'posted via Twitter for iPhone'.
• gregoryexe 7y ago
  I'm confident it will be as effective as the do not call registry.
• ajflores1604 7y ago
  Does anyone have any insight if this would affect market trading algorithms and bots? The article says the law is "requiring that they reveal their “artificial identity” when they are used to sell a product", but I'm not sure how broad of a definition they want for the word "selling".
• cgb223 7y ago
  Cool, hopefully the spammers on Tinder will respect California law /s
• KrishMunot 7y ago
  Does this have to do with the Google AI booking salon appointments over the phone?
• archy_ 7y ago
  Doesn't this effectively outlaw services that scrape your bank accounts (but don't have an official API to work with)?
• mcantelon 7y ago
  Sounds unworkable, but is likely a pretext for some other effort (like undermining anonymity).
• dbieber 7y ago
  You can read the text of the law here: https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billCompareClient.xhtml?bill_id=201720180SB1001 https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billCompareClient.x...
• gnicholas 7y ago
  What about customer support or sales agents who are operating solely off a script? I was contacted by a sales agent of a "lead generation" company, who was being impersonated by her off-shore workers. Eventually during our email exchange the real person jumped in (but did not announce that the prior correspondence was with someone in an offshore sales center. They use these agents to pretend to be their clients, and based on the not-great experience I had when I was initially contacted (email was not well written, said things about my company that wasn't quite right), I would not use them. These folks are essentially like bots, insofar as they are "programmed" to respond and significantly constrained in their latitude. They're like human bots, no?
• msh317 7y ago
  This is a horrible idea, California doesn't have the ability to enforce such a law, and hackers would simple operate from outside California Bad idea
  • threezero 7y ago
    If the company or person is doing any business in California then California does have the ability to enforce the law.
• threezero 7y ago
  I get the feeling that the commercial part of this law might hold up, but the election part is highly questionable based on Supreme Court rulings.