White House Targets Time-Wasting Chatbots in ‘Time is Money’ Campaign

The Biden administration launched a new campaign this week to crack down on businesses wasting consumer time, including rules on customer service chatbots.

The “Time Is Money” campaign directs the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) to create rules that would crack down on “add unnecessary headaches and hassles to people’s days and degrade their quality of life.”

Customer service chatbots are a primary focus of the campaign. The CFPB will be given powers to take action against businesses illicitly using chatbots.

For instance, the government aims to crack down on chatbots that utilize AI-generated voices to deceive consumers into believing they are communicating with a real individual.

A White House announcement states that the CFFB will identify “unlawful” instances and crack down on “ineffective and time-wasting chatbots used by banks and other financial institutions in lieu of customer service.”

The White House fact sheet acknowledges that while chatbots can be useful for answering basic questions, they often have limited ability to solve more complex problems and disputes.

The government’s stance is that technology like chatbots “should be used to enhance customer service with speedy response times, not used to shirk on basic responsibilities, such as receiving a refund..”

Related:FCC Proposes AI Disclosure Rules for Robocalls, Texts

The Biden administration suggests that if customers want to talk to a human, they should be able to do so at convenient times and without long waits.

Beyond chatbots, the government is also tackling issues such as hard to cancel subscription services and imposing new automatic refund rules for airlines to reimburse travelers for canceled flights — a notable inclusion following the recent CrowdStrike outage.

Citizens have been invited to submit ideas on additional measures the government can take to address these issues.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a business advocacy group, claimed the regulatory burden from the program “will cost the American people more time and money.” 

“Businesses succeed by being responsive to customers and have a far better track record of customer service, streamlined paperwork, and prompt response times than the federal government,” said Neil Bradley, the Chamber of Commerce’s chief policy officer. “Imposing heavy-handed regulations that micromanage business practices and pricing is the wrong approach, inevitably raising costs for consumers.”