BEUC has joined the chorus of concerns about chatbots like ChatGPT and other artificial intelligence chatbots, calling for EU consumer protection agencies to investigate the technology and the potential harm to individuals.
The increasing popularity of Open AI's ChatGPT, a platform of Microsoft that can mimic humans and create text and images based on prompts, has spurred others such as Alphabet, Amazon's cloud division AWS and Meta Platforms to launch similar tools.
BEUC, the umbrella group for 46 consumer groups from 32 countries, set out its worries in separate letters to the network of consumer safety authorities CSN network and the network of consumer protection authorities CPC network. The report said that younger consumers and children are more vulnerable to such risks.
BEUC therefore asks you to investigate the risks that these AI systems pose to consumers as a matter of urgency, to identify their presence in consumer markets and to explore what remedial action must be taken to avoid consumer harm, BEUC deputy director Ursula Pachl wrote to the CPC network and the European Commission.
The Consumer Safety Network has urged the Consumer Safety Network to launch an exchange of information and an investigation into the safety hazards of these products.