The Federal Trade Commission has voted unanimously to ban marketers from using fake reviews, such as those generated with AI technology, and other misleading practices to promote their products and services. The ban will go into effect in mid-October. The commission said fake reviews not only waste people’s time and money, they also pollute the marketplace and divert business away from honest competitors. Along with prohibiting reviews written by non-humans, the FTC’s rule also forbids companies from paying for either positive or negative reviews to falsely boost or denigrate a product. It also forbids marketers from exaggerating their own influence by, for example, paying for bots to inflate their follower count. Violations of the rule could result in fines being issued for each violation. This means that for an e-commerce site with hundreds of thousands of reviews, penalties for fake or manipulated reviews could quickly add up. Under the new rule, companies that might have policed themselves in the past will now be subject to stricter government oversight.
