Blog Posts Tagged with Technology

The FTC has been hard at work over the past few years. Part of the agency's mission has been to build internal muscles to better anticipate how existing and emerging technologies can harm consumers...

Today, the FTC released a staff report with OT staff’s findings from the agency’s study into large AI Partnerships and Investments. The last two years have seen the creation or expansion of three...

Today, FTC staff released initial insights from the Surveillance Pricing 6(b) study, highlighting findings that intermediaries have access to a wide swath of data types and data sources (including...

People often talk about “safety” when discussing the risks of AI causing harm. AI safety means different things to different people, and those looking for a definition here will be disappointed. These...

The FTC recently announced a new enforcement action in which it alleged that the data broker Mobilewalla collected and retained sensitive location information from consumers—often without their...

Don’t judge a book by its cover – how a technology is named doesn’t tell you how it is used. This is the case with Data Clean Rooms (“DCRs”), which are not rooms, do not clean data, and have...

Imagine being in a hospital and suddenly feeling like you’re being watched—but not by hospital staff. According to a complaint filed by the Department of Justice upon notification and referral from...

For thousands of years, from ancient Mesopotamian markets to the modern-day yard sale, sellers have set their prices based, in part, on who was buying. In these transactions, prices can be targeted...

The history of traditional open-source software provides a vision of the value that could result from the availability of open-weights AI models – including enabling greater innovation, driving...

An anonymous messaging app marketed to kids and teens: What could possibly go wrong? A lot, allege the FTC and the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office. A complaint against NGL Labs and founders Raj...

In March, the Federal Trade Commission hosted the first-ever Technology Forum by the International Competition Network (ICN) members in Washington, D.C. The forum brought together 21 competition...

Earnest chats with objects are not so unusual. Mark “The Bird” Fidrych, the famed Detroit Tiger, used to stand on the pitching mound whispering to the baseball. Forky, the highly animate utensil from...

The scientific community has a history of creating and sharing lists of important or interesting questions. The mathematician Paul Erdős, for example, famously doled out his questions to students and...

The FTC’s Tech Summit on AI 1 convened three panels that highlighted different layers of the AI tech stack: hardware and infrastructure, data and models, and consumer-facing applications. This third...

The FTC’s Tech Summit on AI [1] convened three panels that each highlighted different layers of the AI tech stack: hardware and infrastructure, data and models, and front-end user applications. This...

For more than two decades, the FTC has been bringing enforcement actions for violations of national consumer protection laws due to companies’ poor security practices. These poor practices have...

We like to think the FTC Business Blog offers an occasional notable quote – or quotable note – on the issues businesses and consumers are talking about. Right now no topic is more top-of-mind than...

Today, the FTC announced four winners of the Voice Cloning Challenge, which was launched to address the present and emerging harms of artificial intelligence, or “AI”-enabled voice cloning...

Voice cloning: A boon for people with medical issues or an AI-enabled bonanza for scammers? The answer depends on who’s using the technology and how they’re using it. That’s why the FTC is taking a...

The FTC’s Office of Technology (“OT”) was founded in 2023 with the purpose of strengthening and supporting law enforcement investigations and actions, advising and engaging with FTC staff and the...