Smoke Screens and Scapegoats: The Reality of General Data Protection Regulation Compliance -- Privacy and Ethics in the Case of Replika AI

Fuente: arXiv
Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Piispanen, Joni-Roy, Myllyviita, Tinja, Vakkuri, Ville, Rousi, Rebekah
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
Subjects:
Online Access:
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866912108534300672
author Piispanen, Joni-Roy
Myllyviita, Tinja
Vakkuri, Ville
Rousi, Rebekah
author_facet Piispanen, Joni-Roy
Myllyviita, Tinja
Vakkuri, Ville
Rousi, Rebekah
contents Currently artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled chatbots are capturing the hearts and imaginations of the public at large. Chatbots that users can build and personalize, as well as pre-designed avatars ready for users' selection, all of these are on offer in applications to provide social companionship, friends and even love. These systems, however, have demonstrated challenges on the privacy and ethics front. This paper takes a critical approach towards examining the intricacies of these issues within AI companion services. We chose Replika as a case and employed close reading to examine the service's privacy policy. We additionally analyze articles from public media about the company and its practices to gain insight into the trustworthiness and integrity of the information provided in the policy. The aim is to ascertain whether seeming General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) compliance equals reliability of required information, or whether the area of GDPR compliance in itself is one riddled with ethical challenges. The paper contributes to a growing body of scholarship on ethics and privacy related matters in the sphere of social chatbots. The results reveal that despite privacy notices, data collection practices might harvest personal data without users' full awareness. Cross-textual comparison reveals that privacy notice information does not fully correspond with other information sources.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2411_04490
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Smoke Screens and Scapegoats: The Reality of General Data Protection Regulation Compliance -- Privacy and Ethics in the Case of Replika AI
Piispanen, Joni-Roy
Myllyviita, Tinja
Vakkuri, Ville
Rousi, Rebekah
Computers and Society
Currently artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled chatbots are capturing the hearts and imaginations of the public at large. Chatbots that users can build and personalize, as well as pre-designed avatars ready for users' selection, all of these are on offer in applications to provide social companionship, friends and even love. These systems, however, have demonstrated challenges on the privacy and ethics front. This paper takes a critical approach towards examining the intricacies of these issues within AI companion services. We chose Replika as a case and employed close reading to examine the service's privacy policy. We additionally analyze articles from public media about the company and its practices to gain insight into the trustworthiness and integrity of the information provided in the policy. The aim is to ascertain whether seeming General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) compliance equals reliability of required information, or whether the area of GDPR compliance in itself is one riddled with ethical challenges. The paper contributes to a growing body of scholarship on ethics and privacy related matters in the sphere of social chatbots. The results reveal that despite privacy notices, data collection practices might harvest personal data without users' full awareness. Cross-textual comparison reveals that privacy notice information does not fully correspond with other information sources.
title Smoke Screens and Scapegoats: The Reality of General Data Protection Regulation Compliance -- Privacy and Ethics in the Case of Replika AI
topic Computers and Society
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2411.04490