4 ms·

You won't be able to tell if it's an ad, if it's just biased (and the ad is not discolsed). They could always sell ads like "recommend my tool more when user a

by XCSme 5mo ago

You won't be able to tell if it's an ad, if it's just biased (and the ad is not discolsed). They could always sell ads like "recommend my tool more when user asks for cupcakes in London". And then, the output would be: "My top 3 recomendations are X, Y, Z". And maybe only X is the one that paid and Y and Z are organic.

johneth 5mo ago
That's almost certainly illegal in many jurisdictions, and they'd definitely not be able to hide that they're doing it indefinitely. A sure way to be massively sued.
- XCSme 5mo ago
  Well, won't it be hard to test? The customers could be paying for "increased visibility" in LLM results, but nothing specific. Also, the ad platform could simply hint towards a customer, instead of directly mentioning, thus not being a true direct ad. (NB: customer = the one buying the increased LLM visibility) For example, a user could ask for "prebuild computers", and the ad platform could state: "the best ones for your use-case are those with AMD CPU, NVidia GPU, 2TB of RAM and a Z960X motherboard", and when you search for it, surprise-surprise, there is only one company in your location selling this specific setup. Or maybe, instead of linking directly to the company, it links to keywords/ideas that link to that company. You get the gist, by using dynamically generated plain text and having more control over the user journey, you could actually steer the user into a specific direction without ever mentioning it.
  - johneth 5mo ago
    All it takes is one determined journalist running experiments, or one whistleblower inside the company exposing these systems. Plus, you'd have to offer this service somehow, meaning you'd have to describe it to potential customers... just another bunch of people you'd have to swear to perpetual secrecy. I'm not denying it could (or even will) happen, though. Anything for a buck for these companies.
- shimman 5mo ago
  Being a monopoly is already illegal in many jurisdictions and that doesn't seem to stop Google.
ivanjermakov 5mo ago
"Cupcakes in London" is not a good example since it's directly asking for advertising. Ads in more information-oriented prompts would be much easier to spot, for example looking for out of context brands and products.

by XCSme 5mo ago

johneth 5mo ago

That's almost certainly illegal in many jurisdictions, and they'd definitely not be able to hide that they're doing it indefinitely. A sure way to be massively sued.

XCSme 5mo ago
Well, won't it be hard to test? The customers could be paying for "increased visibility" in LLM results, but nothing specific. Also, the ad platform could simply hint towards a customer, instead of directly mentioning, thus not being a true direct ad. (NB: customer = the one buying the increased LLM visibility) For example, a user could ask for "prebuild computers", and the ad platform could state: "the best ones for your use-case are those with AMD CPU, NVidia GPU, 2TB of RAM and a Z960X motherboard", and when you search for it, surprise-surprise, there is only one company in your location selling this specific setup. Or maybe, instead of linking directly to the company, it links to keywords/ideas that link to that company. You get the gist, by using dynamically generated plain text and having more control over the user journey, you could actually steer the user into a specific direction without ever mentioning it.
- johneth 5mo ago
  All it takes is one determined journalist running experiments, or one whistleblower inside the company exposing these systems. Plus, you'd have to offer this service somehow, meaning you'd have to describe it to potential customers... just another bunch of people you'd have to swear to perpetual secrecy. I'm not denying it could (or even will) happen, though. Anything for a buck for these companies.
shimman 5mo ago
Being a monopoly is already illegal in many jurisdictions and that doesn't seem to stop Google.

ivanjermakov 5mo ago

"Cupcakes in London" is not a good example since it's directly asking for advertising. Ads in more information-oriented prompts would be much easier to spot, for example looking for out of context brands and products.