NOTWe have become accustomed to using Google to direct us to relevant web pages. Why search these pages, and generate advertising revenue in the process, if artificial intelligence (AI) directly finds the answer to our questions? We use Amazon for a shopping experience documented by sponsored product listings. What will become of them when the AI immediately comes up with the ideal product? We use Facebook or Instagram to be connected to our communities. What will become of this use if the connections and most of the content posted are made by AI? The new generation of AI removes reasons for spending time or browsing the web. However, this time and these clicks are monetized, which questions the very heart of the Internet: its advertising model.
In response, the Gafams (Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft) will probably not resist the temptation to replace advertising with manipulation. The Cambridge Analytica scandal showed, as early as 2014, that it was possible to influence the vote of voters by presenting them individually with fabricated information. Since then the game candy Crush demonstrated that it was possible to create enough addiction to make paying for the possibility of continuing to play. Meta has indicated that it can modify its algorithms to increase the well-being of its users. The voluntary dissemination of fake news has convinced 1 in 10 French people that the Earth is flat.
From now on, a similar use of next-generation AI will make it possible to sell the highest bidder no longer an audience but a service providing direct revenue, or even a quantity of favorable (or unfavorable) opinions! As a collateral effect, this trade in manipulation will be at the expense of the judgment of consumers and voters. MEPs were alarmed by the danger revealed by Cambridge Analytica for democracy. This was in the Stone Age of AI. Today, the industrialization of manipulation constitutes a systemic risk, just as global warming is an ecosystem risk.
In addition, the commercial lands of Gafam have begun to overlap. Amazon and Apple have recently entered the advertising market dominated by the Meta-Google duopoly which, in return, is launching into e-commerce. Microsoft wants to extend the Xbox Store to mobile against Google Store and Apple Store. After video, music, cloud and payment services comes the turn of metaverse, whose stakes could exceed those of the smartphone, or even the Internet. While Apple has not yet announced a product in this segment, Meta and Microsoft have already teamed up against it.
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