Incident 56: AI-Designed Phone Cases Are Unexpected

Description: A third-party Amazon merchant named “my_handy_design” was suspected of using a bot to generate cell phone case designs based on the bizarre and unattractive designs being offered.

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Alleged: my_handy_design developed and deployed an AI system, which harmed my_handy_design.

Incident Stats

Incident ID
56
Report Count
7
Incident Date
2017-07-10
Editors
Sean McGregor

CSET Taxonomy Classifications

Taxonomy Details

Full Description

In 2017, the third-party Amazon merchant named “my_handy_design” was found to be marketing thousands of unique cell phone cases printed with bizarre images. The seller is believed to be a bot trained to create product listings based on image search popularity. Their products include many images that human designers would be unlikely to select, ranging from banal to lewd and illegal, with a predilection for stock photos of medical procedures.

Short Description

A third-party Amazon merchant named “my_handy_design” was suspected of using a bot to generate cell phone case designs based on the bizarre and unattractive designs being offered.

Severity

Unclear/unknown

AI System Description

my_handy_design' is a third-party Amazon merchant speculated to use image seach data and a database of open source images to autonomously generate cell phone case designs.

System Developer

my_handy_design

Sector of Deployment

Wholesale and retail trade

Relevant AI functions

Unclear

AI Techniques

Unclear

AI Applications

content generation

Location

Global

Named Entities

my_handy_design, Amazon

Technology Purveyor

my_handy_design

Beginning Date

2017-01-01T00:00:00.000Z

Ending Date

2017-01-01T00:00:00.000Z

Near Miss

Unclear/unknown

Intent

Unclear

Lives Lost

No

Data Inputs

Unknown

Variants

A "variant" is an incident that shares the same causative factors, produces similar harms, and involves the same intelligent systems as a known AI incident. Rather than index variants as entirely separate incidents, we list variations of incidents under the first similar incident submitted to the database. Unlike other submission types to the incident database, variants are not required to have reporting in evidence external to the Incident Database. Learn more from the research paper.

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