Illinois Human Rights Act Expanded to Include AI Regulation
Recently, Illinois Governor Pritzker signed H.B. 3773 into law, marking a significant expansion of the Illinois Human Rights Act to include specific regulations on the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in employment decisions. This move reflects the state’s ongoing commitment to civil rights protection, now extending into the realm of advanced technology.
What Does H.B. 3773 Mean for Your Business?
AI & Content Creation
Businesses using generative AI programs like ChatGPT to create any content—whether for blogs, websites or other marketing materials, and whether text, visuals, sound or video—need to ensure that they’re not inadvertently using copyrighted materials in the process.
Clearly, the times they are a changing….and businesses need to adapt to the changes. Employers should promulgate messages to their employees and contractors updating their policy manuals to ensure that communications professionals and others crafting content are aware of the risks of using AI-generated materials, which go beyond the possibility that they are “hallucinated” rather than factual—although that’s worth considering, too.
Using Generative AI? Keep Your Secrets
Businesses are finding generative AI programs like ChatGPT useful in functions from financial services to human resources. Although still in its early stages, and far from entirely reliable, the technology is evolving quickly and its tools and practices will continue to develop. The Cisco 2024 Data Privacy Benchmark study found that 79% of businesses say they’re deriving measurable value from generative AI for everything from creating documents to coding.
But this use of generative AI has led to a number of cautions, mostly commonly and loudly about the accuracy of the information that apps like ChatGPT generate—including their tendency to “hallucinate” assertions when they don’t actually have answers.
Is AI Washing Dirty?
Many people have become familiar with the term “greenwashing,” referring to attempts by a company to cast its products as more environmentally friendly than they are through public relations and marketing “spin” efforts.
Now comes the concept of “AI-washing,” in which companies exaggerate the degree to which or ways in which their products and services are powered by artificial intelligence, in order to gain a real or perceived competitive advantage. In addition to potentially misleading consumers and harming investors, this can break U.S. securities law, according to Gary Gensler, chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission.
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