The Legal Issues That Arise When Using GPT Powered Artificial Intelligence for Virtual Reality or Augmented Reality Advertising

The potential of GPT3 and other artificial intelligence platforms to sell items in virtual reality or augmented reality cannot be underestimated; clearly, it is in the cards for the next iteration of marketing products or services. But what are the legal dangers that this will engender, and how can they be overcome?

What are the Legal Issues that Arise When Marketing Products or Services in Virtual or Augmented Reality?

There an unending list of situations in which variations of the same legal issues might arise when advertising via virtual or augmented reality. Consider the following scenarios:

• A car dealership situates a virtual billboard in a virtual setting, such as the Metaverse. The billboard provides a ten percent discount for a visitor to the actual dealership if they use the promo code on the virtual billboard.
• An optician provides a pair of free reading glasses to anyone who refers a new patient in the course of viewing the optician’s virtual reality display of glasses for sale.
• A door to a virtual gaming room can only be opened if the participant pays a fee using their credit card.

Each of these examples of advertising within AR or VR raises the issue of what law applies if any of the promised products or services are not provided as represented. What country and state’s law applies? Who is responsible, the company selling the product or service; the developer who created the advertisement; the provider of the immersive virtual world? Did they all act in concert or was a mistake made or some instruction miscommunicated? How can litigation depositions and discovery take place when it is unclear what court (or whether any court) has jurisdiction?

How do Those Legal Issues Play out When the VR/AR Marketing is Enhanced Through GPT or Other Artificial Intelligence Platforms?

All of those legal issues are augmented, so to speak, through the use of artificially intelligent enhanced platforms, such as adjuncts to, or variations of, the nascent Google platform LaMDA or Microsoft’s ChatGPT powered Bing. For example,

• The virtual salesperson can ask the car dealership to negotiate the price, the loan terms, the add-ons and so forth. In fact, the artificial intelligence platform might not only negotiate those terms, but also provide a virtual contract that might be agreed to through the user’s voice confirmation (which could be recorded and digitally attached to the final version of the agreement). The entire interaction would take place without a human being negotiating for the car dealership; however, it would conceivably be legally binding on the user.
• The artificial intelligence powered virtual optician could obtain the credit card information and digitally schedule an eye exam with a human optician. 
• The virtual room might open into a closed interactive space with different avatars, furnishings, activities and social interactions. The experience of the immersive environment could be modified by artificial intelligence on the fly, not only based upon an interactive conversation with the user, but also through an assessment of their mood that day as reflected by the conversation’s tone and length; the user’s anniversaries or birthdays listed on the calendar and even their shopping history and books they are reading. In other words, the artificial intelligence application could asses the particular environment that would be pleasing to the user in a way that the user themselves might not be able to define in advance.

The legal issues of marketing your product or service through virtual or augmented reality are obvious: there is no person on the other side of the transaction. Yet, the aim is to give the impression that there is. Indeed, the measure of success in an immersive virtual environment is how real it feels; something which can be immeasurably enhanced through the use of GPT and other artificial intelligence applications.

The use of Legal Consent in the Virtual World

There is an obvious way of mitigating risk for the business advertising its product or service virtually: the use of consents. Accordingly, businesses using the virtual world in this manner, especially those employing artificial intelligence to increase the realism of the encounter and bring the consumer closer to virtually signing on the dotted line, should consider requiring that the user agree to terms and conditions that would include, among other terms, the following:

• a waiver of liability for engaging in the transaction;
• a choice of law in a particular state;
• a consent to jurisdiction in a particular court in that state, with the option to pursue the matter in federal court if appropriate;
• a confirmation that the user is an actual person who is not impersonating another; and
• a confirmation of age and legal capacity to enter into the transaction.

Of course, all of this would need to be followed (or perhaps preceded) by a consent to an appropriate privacy policy for the data that would be collected in the transaction and otherwise.

The Nissenbaum Law Group welcomes potential clients who are seeking legal advice in utilizing artificial intelligence-generated content for their businesses via virtual or augmented reality.

The Nissenbaum Law Group has a focus on digital law that includes representing businesses that seek to take advantage of cutting-edge technology, such as artificial intelligence enhanced platforms, including adjuncts to, or variations of, the nascent Google platform LaMDA or Microsoft’s ChatGPT powered Bing. The firm encourages any businesses with questions or concerns about the legal issues engendered by using artificial intelligence platforms—including the copyright and other intellectual property protections that may be necessary— to contact Mr. Nissenbaum at gdn@gdnlaw.com.