The Advent of GDPR Causes A Global Shift Toward AI Innovation

The GDPR effect doesn’t seem to fade just yet. In fact, it’s just starting to take shape. After coming into effect on 25th May 2018 across the European Union, it has taken the whole world by storm. Not only European companies are affected by the emergence of GDPR but all the MNCs and other companies that are also running their business in European Countries fall under the influence of GDPR.

Apart from that, the arrival of GDPR also had a major impact on various technological domains like ERP, IoT, Digital Advertising, Content Recommendation and Artificial Intelligence. Talking about Artificial Intelligence, the technology seem to have a stern effect as an upshot of GDPR regulation across the EU. As it turns out, the barriers in the path of GDPR compliance can also prove to be impervious for the widespread adoption of GDPR across the EU. Let’s see how!

How GDPR And AI Go Hand In Hand

GDPR compliance is applied to all types of data operations including the collection, analysis, processing, and movement of data across various sources. This data is further used to identify a person using various factors like name, email id, social media accounts, bank accounts etc. As it turns out, all these factors are also used to power complex AI algorithms especially those which are focused on targeting ads and remarketing. So in that context, it won’t be irrelevant to say that the advent of GDPR will definitely have a major impact on the AI innovation. Negative or positive, that is the question!

You may also like The Impact of GDPR On Content Recommendation Engines.

How GDPR Impacts AI

Article 22 of the GDPR which is about Automated Decision-making explicitly states that AI can’t be used as the sole decision-maker when it comes to choices that may have legal or other serious implications upon the users. In other words, this implies that the users in EU will not be completely dependent on AI for decision making, i.e they can also request a human review of their applications when necessary. For example, if a company is using an automated module for filtering out the eligible applicants for a specific job profile based on their resumes, then it must also allow its applicants to get their resumes reviewed manually under certain conditions.

Although all these steps have been taken to enhance the data security of the EU citizens, it will also cause a major disruption in rendering online services across the EU. Online Advertising will be more adversely affected and since Europe accounts for about 11 percent of the global advertising spend, it may create potential roadblocks for the online advertising agencies operating in Europe.