We spend many of our working hours – and far too many of our nonworking hours – talking about Federal Trade Commission (FTC or Commission) issues, and we can confidently state that no one has ever said to us, “I sure do wish the agency would issue yet another policy statement.” With that, we turn to the latest public Commission meeting – where, yes, another policy statement emerged.
But first, let’s talk about the latest FTC report, this one on the use of artificial intelligence (AI) to combat certain online harms, including scams, fake reviews, disinformation and hate crimes. Sometimes the FTC will do reports on its own initiative (such as the recently announced pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) study), but other times, Congress will, through legislation, require the Commission to prepare a report on a specific topic, and that is often done as part of the agency appropriation process. Today’s report was one of those congressionally mandated studies.
As we have seen before, an FTC staffer provided an overview of this report and all five of the commissioners discussed their views, with no interaction between the commissioners and staff. We know we are beating a dead horse, but these meetings would be far more informative (and possibly entertaining, since we assume that is a goal) if there were the slightest bit of extemporaneous discussion. So, what did we hear?
A longtime FTC staffer provided an overview of the report, which raised a number of…
