AI-enabled dark patterns manipulating consumers: Consumer affairs secretary Nidhi Khare

Secretary, Department of Consumer Affairs, Nidhi Khare

Artificial intelligence-enabled dark patterns are increasingly being used to manipulate consumers and influence their choices, Nidhi Khare, Secretary in the Department of Consumer Affairs and Chief Commissioner of the Central Consumer Protection Authority (CCPA), said on December 19.

Speaking at the "Workshop on Artificial Intelligence, Competition and Governance", an official pre-summit event of the AI Impact Summit organised by Competition Commission of India and NASSCOM, Khare said, "AI is being used to manipulate your choice, they are nudging you, driving you to a decision. You do not realise its manipulative powers."

Khare said the Department of Consumer Affairs has identified 13 dark patterns and has initiated discussions with e-commerce companies on the issue. Recently, the government announced that around 26 e-commerce entities have made an open declaration committing to not deploy such dark patterns on their platforms.

Khare noted that major e-commerce players were not among the 26 companies who have taken the undertaking of not deploying dark patterns on their platforms. “Major players are missing in the list. We are coming fast on them,” Khare said.

"This (Dark patterns) is a market sales strategy," Khare said, while giving an example of a user booking a flight on a platform, and the platform manipulates and pressurised the user into getting their tickers fast by flashing messages like "only two seats available".

"This shows that this is an organised pattern that the industry is doing," she added.

Khare also referred to an ongoing investigation into a prominent ticket-booking platform, without naming it, and recent action taken against ride-sharing app Rapido over the use of dark patterns.

"We have started taking up class action without even consumer coming to us," Khare said, pointing to the Consumer Protection Act 2019, which enables this provision.