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The endgame is undisclosed promotional content seamlessly inserted into algorithmic output. And of course this will be too indirect and obfuscated to be regulated. If you think lack of corporate accountability is bad now, wait until all reputation and liability have been fully laundered to AI.

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Couldn't regulators simply target the other end? As in, denying businesses the right to "buy AI generated ad space"? Or denying ad companies a license to include seamless ads in AI generated output?

Billboards on the highway are limited in scope due to safety and other reasons. A billboard can't have mechanical arms that swing about causing driver distraction. If "information safety" is becoming a thing, the equivalent of "no mechanical arms on billboards" might be enforced on AI generators? Or am I suggesting a remedy worse than the problem is solves?

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Consider the various restrictions on tobacco advertising. Now think about how newly legal gambling advertises. What regulations we have are largely a vestige of a different time. Half the politicians in this era put business over people, the other half don't have the legislative power to put people over business.

[exodust]

I suppose... If I ask Google's AI to walk me through the process of baking a chocolate cake, I don't care if the AI seamlessly recommends a brand of flour or appliance. As long as it doesn't compromise the fundamental cake-making advice.

Where it gets problematic, is if the AI pushes a specific brand as a necessary step of the cake-making process. Suddenly it's unethical.

It would also be a problem if the AI recommended a competing brand of appliance if I were specifically asking the AI to tell me how to use XYZ brand of appliance. Kind of like how Google lets advertisers buy ads for competitor keywords, which in my opinion is grubby and borderline unethical.