Algorithmic marketing and EU law on unfair commercial practices. Rethinking consumer protection with AI

The background of the book is provided by the increased deployment of Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems by marketing entities in consumers interactions. Thanks to machine learning (ML) and cognitive computing technologies, businesses can today analyse vast amounts of data about consumers, generate new knowledge, and act thereupon to optimize certain processes, and undertake tasks previously impossible. Against this background, the objective of the proposed book is to analyse new algorithmic commercial practices, their challenges to consumers, and measure such developments against current EU legislative framework on consumer protection. The book adopts an interdisciplinary methodology, building on empirical findings from AI applications in marketing, theoretical insights from surveillance and marketing studies, and condensing them with normative analysis on EU privacy and consumer protection. The target audience of the proposed book is academia, in particular ICT, consumer protection and data protection lawyers, as well as computer scientists involved in AI and its ethical/legal impact. The book is organized into two parts. The first part analyses the phenomenon of algorithmic marketing practices. It reviews main AI technologies in marketing, such as ML and NLP. It describes new commercial practices, including the massive monitoring and profiling of consumers, the personalization of advertising and offers, the exploitation of psychological and emotional insights, and the use of human-like interfaces for triggering consumers’ affection. It highlights the risks of the increased power of businesses to influence consumers’ behaviour and to undermine their ability to pursue personal and collective interests. The second part provides a comprehensive analysis of current EU consumer protection laws and policies in the field of commercial practices. It includes consumer protection instruments (such as the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive) and data protection regulations (e.g., GDPR), and recent EU policies (e.g., AI Act). It focuses on two main legal concepts, their shortcomings, and potential refinements: vulnerability, understood as the conceptual benchmark for protecting consumers vis-à-vis unfair algorithmic practices; manipulation, as substantive legal measure for drawing the line between fair and unfair practices.