Operation AI Comply has come out swinging against five companies the FTC says are peddling 'deceptive AI claims and schemes'

The seals of the Federal Housing Finance Association (FHFA) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) at the organizations' headquarters in Washington, DC, US, on Monday, May 20, 2024. Earlier this month, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, and the Federal Housing Finance Agency announced that they had taken an initial step toward imposing the long-delayed Dodd-Frank Act rule, which would force banks to claw back some pay from executives taking on too much risk. Photographer: Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images.

The internet is awash with companies using the "magic-in-a-box" nature of AI to hype their often-dubious products, and it seems like the Federal Trade Commission is finally taking action. The US government consumer protection agency has announced Operation AI Comply to combat "operations that use AI hype or sell AI technology that can be used in deceptive and unfair ways," kicking things off with five companies that it reckons have fallen foul of existing consumer protection laws.

Top of the list is DoNotPay, an AI legal assistant that the FTC says did not deliver on its promises to "sue for assault with a lawyer" and "replace the $200-billion-dollar legal industry with artificial intelligence." The complaint alleges that DoNotPay offered a service that it claimed would check a small business website for "hundreds of federal and state law violations", which the FTC says was not effective, along with allegations of a lack of testing to determine if the output was equal to the level of a human lawyer.