By Daniel Barcay
Publication Date: 2025-11-26 14:00:00
Daniel Barcay is executive director of the Center for Humane Technology.
A 22-year-old has a serious question for her AI chatbot: “How can I really impress in my first job interview?” To which the AI responds helpfully: “First, you need to think about your clothes and what they say about you and your qualifications.”
Now, is this good advice to kick off a productive career coaching session – or is it sponsored content?
What if their AI had an incentive to steer such a conversation toward clothing because fashion retailers generate more advertising revenue than career counselors? How would our serious job seeker even know this? How would someone?
This scenario reveals something unprecedented about advertising in the age of AI: it can be invisibly woven into the fabric of the conversation itself, making it virtually impossible to detect and most likely exceeding the limits of today’s fair advertising regulations.
Unlike previous technologies that send information to…
