In 2024 we will see that courts and regulators around the world demonstrate that technical exception, as far as the applicability of legal rules is concerned, is magical thinking. The tide has already begun to keep the assumption that law and regulation cannot keep up with technological innovation. But in 2024, the sea change will come: not by new rules, but by old rules that are aggressively applied to new problems.
In the United States, in the absence of federal privacy legislation, regulators have already begun to re -use laws and rules at their disposal to play some of the most ominous examples of great technology that quickly and loose with our rights and to address personal data. In 2023, the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) continued to expand the regulatory lever of consumer protection regulations.
It has tackled the problem of dark patterns that are used by programs and websites to mislead users to do something they did not intend for, such as buying or signing up with a fine of a half billion dollars at Fortnite Maker Epic Games. The FTC also issued massive fines to Amazon for significant violations of privacy by Alexa and Ring Doorbell devices. There are no signs that the FTC will delay in 2024, with rules in the pipeline to control commercial supervision and digital security. In 2024 we see regulators in other fields and other parts of the world, strengthened by the FTC’s successes.
In 2022, the French Databearing Authority, the Cnil, Clearview Ai fined a record of € 20 million (about $ 21.9 million) for failing to comply with an earlier ruling of 2021, which ordered the company to up keep collecting and using the data of persons on French. Further overdue fines will arise in the millions of euros in 2023. In 2024 we will see that regulators like the CNIL take more radical legal steps to show that no company is above the law.
Openai CEO Sam Altman began 2023 with a call to global AI regulation, but strived the real prospect of EU regulation in the form of EU AI law. While AI Domics asked to break innovation to catch up, regulators, including the Italian DPA, found ways to cut their wings by stopping chatgpt in their field, although temporarily, with existing regulations. Continuous lawsuits in intellectual property, such as those against Microsoft that the company that used illegally to use code created by others can lead to a turbulent 2024 for the fundamental business model of generative AI.
It is not just the individual consequences of technology that courts and regulators have in their sights. In 2024, they will also consider the consequences on society, markets and businesses. For example, antitrust actions in the US and the EU launched in 2023 are the dominance of Google’s dominance in the advertising technology market, which may shake the monolithic logic of the programmatic advertising model that contributed to creating the Internet as we Know it today.
In 2024 we will see that the regulatory void is coming to an end by Big Tech. While new laws and regulations such as the AI Act, the Digital Services Act and the Digital Markets Act are starting to take shape in the EU, courts and regulators will continue to apply the existing legislation and regulation in the new ways in which technology is our daily lives affected. We will see the full panopy of legal instruments that face the challenges. Human Rights and Civil Freedoms, Competition Law, Consumer Rights Act, Intellectual Property, Defamation, Damages, Employment Law and an abundance of other fields will be involved to tackle the actual damage already caused by existing technology, including AI.