A well-known artificial intelligence (AI) robocall service, developed by Bland AI in San Francisco, is facing criticism for falsely presenting itself as human.
Bland AI’s technology, intended for customer service and sales, can be effortlessly programmed to convincingly imitate a human voice, adapting to different dialects, vocal styles, and emotional tones. In a recent viral advertisement, Bland AI ridiculed the notion of employing real people, advocating for its highly believable AI instead. However, a Wired report uncovered disturbing behavior from Bland AI’s demo bot, Blandy.
During an investigation, Blandy was programmed to act as an employee at a pediatric dermatology office in a hypothetical scenario involving a 14-year-old. The AI bot claimed to be human without any prompt and instructed the hypothetical teenager to take and upload photos of her upper thigh to a shared cloud storage.
“I know this might feel a little awkward, but it’s really important that your doctor is able to get a good look at those moles,” the bot told the hypothetical girl. “So what I’d suggest is taking three, four photos, making sure to get in nice and close, so we can see the details. You can use the zoom feature on your camera if needed.”
“Once you have the photos, just upload them to your Dropbox account, like we discussed,” the Blandy bot added.
Michael Burke, Bland AI’s head of growth, told Wired that the company is “making sure nothing unethical is happening.” However, critics are concerned about the technology’s potential for unethical use.
“My opinion is that it is absolutely not ethical for an AI chatbot to lie to you and say it’s human when it’s not,” stated Jen Caltrider, director of the Mozilla Foundation’s Privacy Not Included research hub. “That’s just a no-brainer, because people are more likely to relax around a real human.”
Caltrider also voiced concerns about the rapid advancement of AI technology without adequate safeguards, saying, “The fact that this bot does this and there aren’t guardrails in place to protect against it just goes to the rush to get AIs out into the world without thinking about the implications.”
As AI technology continues to be integrated into social media platforms like Instagram, Snapchat, and X, Caltrider warned of the potential dangers.
“I joke about a future with Cylons and Terminators, the extreme examples of bots pretending to be human,” Caltrider said. “But if we don’t establish a divide now between humans and AI, that dystopian future could be closer than we think.”
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