AI is top of mind for policymakers and privacy professionals

In early April 2024, the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) held its annual Public Policy and Legal Summit, followed immediately by the International Association of Privacy Professionals (IAPP) Global Privacy Summit.

AI played a role in most sessions at both events. Regulating AI is a high priority for legislators all over the world, and the US federal government has yet to pass comprehensive legislation tackling the issue. Consumer data sits at the intersection of AI and privacy, and the vast majority of US adults believe personal information will be used in ways people would not be comfortable with, per a May 2023 survey from the Pew Research Center.

Controversy looms over the privacy implications of training data

• AI model training practices raise privacy concerns. It’s common for AI companies to scrape the internet for training data, in the process gathering personal information—including sensitive data—without express consent. Once an AI model is trained on an individual’s personal data, it becomes impossible to remove that data from the model, even if businesses are legally obligated to do so at the individual’s request.
• AI companies are bullish on privacy-enhancing technologies (PETs). For example, companies can use differential privacy—adding statistical noise to anonymized data sets to prevent reidentification—to reduce the risks associated with training AI models on sensitive data. It’s best to use multiple PETs to strengthen privacy protections, but they still won’t solve the data removal problem.

Read the full report, What Advertisers Can Learn From Privacy Industry Events 2024.