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California law banning bots from pretending to be real people without disclosure

newyorker.com

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Re: California law banning bots from pretending to be real people without disclosure

#31

Post by floatingatoll »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #24
floatingatoll wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) No, proofreading is not authorship. 2,3,4) A judge could reasonably find that you were attempting to circumvent the law and declare all of these as “bot”. The judicial system will not specify in writing complete coverage for every loophole. Judges can, regardless, find you guilty.

> 1) No, proofreading is not authorship. It is when the substitution is both context-aware and not what you intended to write. > 2,3,4) A judge could reasonably find that you were attempting to circumvent the law and declare all of these as “bot”. Wait, so if someone sends you a question and the suggestions can detect from the context your answer, you're a bot because you chose the suggestion instead of typing out wo…

Assistive texting is covered in a separate reply here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20360152

The law clearly targets automated content creation that is not declared as such, not assistive writing technologies, and this will be considered by the judicial system when evaluating your stated intentions and actual actions. If you are unable to predict with confidence the outcome of your intentions and actions as they may be interpreted by the judicial system, please seek legal counsel for further guidance.

Re: California law banning bots from pretending to be real people without disclosure

#32

Post by dmix »

floatingatoll wrote: post #17
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #9

That will be a fun one to interpret. So if I use autocorrect, am I a bot? What if the device makes next word suggestions and I use them? What if the device suggests the entire post, but I manually approve it? What if it suggests five separate posts and I approve them all at once?

1) No, proofreading is not authorship. 2,3,4) A judge could reasonably find that you were attempting to circumvent the law and declare all of these as “bot”. The judicial system will not specify in writing complete coverage for every loophole. Judges can, regardless, find you guilty.

Cool, you get to defend your bot in court. But don’t worry you’ll win!

Re: California law banning bots from pretending to be real people without disclosure

#33

Post by smt88 »

scarejunba wrote: post #5

If I make a generated face that speaks my stuff with a generated voice, is it a bot?

No, much the way Stephen Hawking's voice was not a "bot", nor would someone playing a song on a digital keyboard be considered a "music bot". In both cases, there is no meaningful automation -- just a digital instrument creating sounds out of a human's intent.

Re: California law banning bots from pretending to be real people without disclosure

#34

Post by wpietri »

WalterBright wrote: post #27
dessant wrote: post #22

I felt stupid, but I have fallen victim to this on dpd.com while tracking a package. A helpful chat popup has appeared where I could request assistance from a support agent, but it was not disclosed that the agent is a bot. Needless to say I have spent a couple of minutes repeatedly asking a question, and even rephrasing it while being frustrated that this person does not seem to grasp my issue.

Those are fairly easy to spot. One dead giveaway is their excessively chirpy voice. Or, as you did, just say something that puts them off script.

Currently they're fairly easy to spot -- if you work in tech, anyhow. A lot of money will be put into making them harder and harder to spot. I'm glad to see this law come at the beginning of that process, so there isn't an established industry that can put money into fighting it.

Re: California law banning bots from pretending to be real people without disclosure

#36

Post by wpietri »

mirimir wrote: post #8

> Violators could face fines under state statutes related to unfair competition. I doubt that anyone running bots, and who is technically competent, will be identifiable or findable. I mean, I could do it, and I'm just a random anonymous coward.

I think part of the goal of this law is to make this be true:

> I doubt that anyone running bots, and who is technically competent, will be identifiable or findable.

Telemarketing, for example, was done a great deal by perfectly legal, traceable businesses. Once it was made illegal, it was forced underground, and volume dropped immensely.

> I could do it, and I'm just a random anonymous coward.

Could you? Hiding the flow of significant amounts of money is actually quite hard. Robot salesmen masquerading as humans would be a plague, and I think this law should keep that from becoming a legitimate business technique.

Re: California law banning bots from pretending to be real people without disclosure

#38

Post by luckylion »

WalterBright wrote: post #27
dessant wrote: post #22

I felt stupid, but I have fallen victim to this on dpd.com while tracking a package. A helpful chat popup has appeared where I could request assistance from a support agent, but it was not disclosed that the agent is a bot. Needless to say I have spent a couple of minutes repeatedly asking a question, and even rephrasing it while being frustrated that this person does not seem to grasp my issue.

Those are fairly easy to spot. One dead giveaway is their excessively chirpy voice. Or, as you did, just say something that puts them off script.

> Or, as you did, just say something that puts them off script.

I don't know about that. Does Amazon's support use bots? Or are they just in a remote call center using auto translate to communicate with customers?

Because in general, they appear like bots to me: they will parse for key words and reply to those, ignoring context and subtle differences that make their replies sound weird.

Re: California law banning bots from pretending to be real people without disclosure

#39

Post by AnthonyMouse »

floatingatoll wrote: post #31
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 1) No, proofreading is not authorship. It is when the substitution is both context-aware and not what you intended to write. > 2,3,4) A judge could reasonably find that you were attempting to circumvent the law and declare all of these as “bot”. Wait, so if someone sends you a question and the suggestions can detect from the context your answer, you're a bot because you chose the suggestion instead of typing out wo…

Assistive texting is covered in a separate reply here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20360152 The law clearly targets automated content creation that is not declared as such, not assistive writing technologies, and this will be considered by the judicial system when evaluating your stated intentions and actual actions. If you are unable to predict with confidence the outcome of your intentions and actions as t…

> The law clearly targets automated content creation that is not declared as such, not assistive writing technologies

How are those two different things? In each case it's a machine generating and suggesting things that you may want to write. Presumably in the second case the suggestions would have to be more sophisticated in order to be coherent most of the time, but that still doesn't really give you any useful criteria to distinguish them. We're already at the point that phones have context-aware word suggestions. There isn't really a principled line to draw there at the point where the suggestions get good enough to constitute the entire message. It already happens sometimes.

Re: California law banning bots from pretending to be real people without disclosure

#40

Post by danieltillett »

dessant wrote: post #22

I felt stupid, but I have fallen victim to this on dpd.com while tracking a package. A helpful chat popup has appeared where I could request assistance from a support agent, but it was not disclosed that the agent is a bot. Needless to say I have spent a couple of minutes repeatedly asking a question, and even rephrasing it while being frustrated that this person does not seem to grasp my issue.

Apparently the solution is just to swear at the bot and you get punted to a human, the downside is many of the humans are no better than a bot.
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