Future trends in advertising compliance: AI

Artificial intelligence (AI) is currently a hot topic, with a media focus on the potential for AI to advance unfettered. But AI is already accessible to millions of Australians with internet access and is actively in use by a wide range of government authorities. For example, traffic infringement cameras that use AI to identify drivers illegally using mobile phones or not wearing seatbelts are in use in most states and territories, and the Australian Taxation Office has been using AI for some years, including to identify non-compliant tax payers. It won’t end here.

In the push for more efficient government agencies that deliver more bang for the tax-payers buck, AI offers the opportunity for regulators to work smarter by automating at least some aspects of compliance and enforcement work, including the identification of non-compliant entities and activities.

AI can identify non-compliant advertising

In 2023, the United Kingdom’s Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) implemented an AI-based Active Ad Monitoring System. This system supported multiple projects in 2023, including curtailing the online promotion of youth vaping and prescription-only medicines, and its scope will be expanded in 2024. The system works by capturing online advertisements and searching them for specific compliance issues. While staff are still needed to review each advertisement flagged by the system to confirm the compliance issue and determine the need for compliance action, the system will continue to learn and get better at identifying non-compliance. The ASA’s system currently processes around 100,000 advertisements a month—that’s more than 3,300 a day and far more than could be achieved by searching and screening manually. And there is the potential for it to screen even larger numbers of advertisements. Ireland’s ASA has also announced it will be using AI to proactively identify breaches of the advertising rules.

The future of AI in regulation

A 2023 report published on the Australian National Audit Office website about the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) and the way it manages non-compliance doesn’t specifically mention that AI is being used in the compliance space. However, the report indicates the TGA engages with other entities (including other government agencies and private sector experts) to inform its intelligence gathering—and it’s possible these entities use AI. Further, the TGA’s budgets and resourcing is unlikely to keep pace with the rising popularity and rate of online advertising (including through social media), so employing AI to help it identify non-compliance seems the obvious next step.

AI also offers regulators opportunities in relation to research and policy setting. For example, each year, the TGA sets its import, advertising and supply compliance priorities. Such priorities could be informed by analysing data from the usual information sources (like feedback from the community and other regulators, or trends in non-compliance identified from internally collected data). AI could add another dimension to this analysis, with the ability to provide insight into emerging trends in the advertising of therapeutic goods before they become publicly obvious.

Interested in using AI to generate or power your medicines or medical devices advertising? Read Seeside’s advice on where you might need to pay some extra attention to avoid compliance issues – Intelligent advertising: using AI in medicine and medical device advertising.

Further reading

For regulated entities (like advertisers):

AI and regulators: