"The FTC’s biggest AI enforcement tool? Forcing companies to delete their algorithms", 5 July 2023

While lawmakers in Congress and policymakers around the world debate how they should establish guardrails for a rapidly expanding artificial intelligence industry, the Federal Trade Commission already has a powerful enforcement tool in place: algorithm disgorgement.

Also referred to as model deletion, the enforcement strategy requires companies to delete products built on data they shouldn’t have used in the first place. For instance, if the commission finds that a company trained a large language model on improperly obtained data, then it will have to delete all the information along with the products developed from the ill-gotten data...

...So far, the FTC has used this tool in five cases against tech companies dating back to 2019, including in a case against a diet app for children and the controversial data analytics firm Cambridge Analytica. Most recently, the commission proposed a pair of settlements with Amazon that required it to delete ill-gotten data. The agency’s order over privacy violations from Amazon’s Ring required the security camera company to delete data products, including algorithms, from videos it unlawfully reviewed. In another settlement with Amazon, the FTC ordered the tech giant to delete children’s data, geolocation data and other voice recordings it obtained in an alleged violation of federal children’s privacy law...

...Model deletion isn’t a new tool for the agency but it has picked up in frequency over the past year. In May, the FTC sued an education technology company for violating the privacy of students as young as those in kindergarten. The proposed settlement ordered the company to delete any models or algorithms it developed using the data. Experts say disgorgement is an effective enforcement tool because it has significant costs for a company’s business model, rather than just fines that can be a slap on the wrist for major players...