AI Mimicking and Interpreting Humans: Legal and Ethical Reflections

The increasing prevalence of AI in all facets of human lives raises profound questions of ethics, policy, and law. Interactions with AI in situations that traditionally involve humans demonstrate the growing sophistication and adaptivity of the technology. For this very reason, we may demand some basic rules of engagement from these interactions-AI should not deceive humans into believing it is human or that it has human-like capacities and should be transparent about its artificial status. Law increasingly makes these demands. We may further question as a matter of practical ethics, if not law, whether even "well-trained" AI should be used at all in intimate or personal interactions with humans. This essay seeks to explore these issues by reference to a series of examples in which AI seeks to mimic or interpret humans: AI influencers on social media, AI companions, AI mental health therapy chatbots, and AI emotion detection tools.