eBay Chief Privacy Officer, VP AI & Data Responsibility Anna Zeiter Departs
eBay's Chief Privacy Officer and VP AI and Data Responsibility, Anna Zeiter is departing after 11.5 years at the company, leaving open questions about who will be handling crucial responsible AI and other privacy initiatives going forward.
Zeiter announced the news in a post on LinkedIn, saying she's ready to take on a new big and important challenge.
During her tenure, Zeiter led important initiatives like developing eBay's Responsible AI Principles which guide how the company uses, develops and deploys new AI powered technologies and features.
Sep 7, 2023 By: Dr. Anna Zeiter
But those policies have recently come under regulatory scrutiny, particularly in Europe where privacy authorities in Germany have raised concerns about eBay utilizing user data to train AI systems after receiving a flood of complaints about the practice from both buyer and sellers.
Liz Morton
Sellers have also raised transparency concerns around ways that eBay may be using AI to alter their listing information without their explicit permission and without clear disclosure to them or to consumers - like removing watermarks from listing images used for Google Shopping and using AI to generate description summaries and product detail highlights that often contain incorrect or misleading information.
Liz Morton
Given the fact that eBay does not publicly announce much of the testing they do around these features or disclose to sellers that AI may be being used to alter pictures, descriptions and other listing details, it's difficult to take the AI Principals Zeiter touted during her time at the company seriously.
If eBay wants sellers to believe they really are committed to AI Responsibility, they need to provide clear guidelines for how to report errors in eBay AI generated content, proactive protections for when eBay's AI gets it wrong when there is no direct seller involvement, and an easy way for sellers to opt out of having these features applied to their listings - or better yet, make them opted out by default and require sellers to give explicit, affirmative consent before they are enabled.
This increasing use of AI in ways that may be altering seller-provided information or create content being shown to buyers could have potentially huge ramifications for eBay and other marketplaces when it comes to certain liability protections they currently enjoy due to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996, the so called "26 words that created the internet," which provides broad immunity to online platforms for content posted by their users.
Section 230 states:
No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.
The idea of marketplace liability is nothing new of course - since the dawn of the internet and ecommerce, legislators and regulatory agencies across the globe have wrestled with the subject, especially when it comes to sites like Etsy and eBay which historically have leaned on the fact they are "just a venue" for items sold by third party sellers.
While that "just a venue" stance is no longer true for eBay, it didn't stopped them from forwarding that argument to defend themselves against a lawsuit brought by the US Department of Justice on behalf of the Environmental Protection Agency in 2023, seeking to hold the company liable for illegal chemicals, pesticides and emissions control cheat devices sold on the platform.
U.S. District Judge Orelia Merchant agreed with eBay, dismissing the case in a ruling stating that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 protects eBay from liability for items sold by 3rd parties on their site and the DOJ dropped their plan to appeal earlier this year.
Liz Morton
Corporations have very little incentive to do anything beyond Minimum Viable Compliance box checking exercises when they know they are legally insulated from liability and can afford to keep litigation tied up for years should anyone try to challenge the status quo.
But eBay's use of AI to create description summaries, product highlights, and other content as well as to altar seller-provided images without their knowledge could pose interesting legal questions about how far Section 230 protections stretch.
In that context, the AI generated information does not come from another information content provider (since it is not a verbatim usage of seller-provided information) but rather from LLMs or other technology the company has put in place between sellers and buyers on their platform.
That could potentially make the marketplace the publisher of that content, thus potentially liable for any resulting consumer harm, and it will be interesting to see if challenges to Section 230 protection for marketplaces are raised along those lines as Congress and the courts continue to grapple with the future of Section 230.
eBay is also facing potential legal challenges around their use of third party trackers, with multiple law firms investigating whether these practices may be in violation of the California Invasion of Privacy Act (“CIPA”).
Liz Morton
Zeiter has not yet announced where she'll be heading next, but she also currently sits on the board of directors of international gaming studio Modern Times Group, so it will be interesting to see if she will be moving into a new role tackling AI and privacy in the entertainment and gaming world.
eBay has not announced her replacement and has not responded to request for comment at time of publishing.
