Researchers create simplified visualization of terms of use with ai-bot
Researchers from the Swiss Technical University EPFL have put an AI bot online that reads terms of use and converts them into a clear flowchart. In addition, users can ask questions about the conditions to a chatbot.
The artificial intelligence converts the texts into short pieces of information that are divided over different tabs, a system that the researchers call Polisis. Those tabs include data collection, security, third-party sharing, data retention, and policy changes. Where applicable, the information is presented in flowcharts, but some tabs only quote the relevant parts of the terms. The AI routine takes about thirty seconds to analyze a new set of conditions. There are also browser extensions for Chrome and Firefox.
The ai chatbot, called PriBot, is able to answer questions about the terms and conditions, eliminating the need for users to search for a specific part that they are curious about. The bot gives a confidence score to its answers and there is an option to further compress and simplify the answer, although this feature is experimental.
To train the AI, 115 sets of conditions were analyzed by law students. Furthermore, 130,000 sets of terms and conditions have been taken from the Google Play Store with a scraper, which has also been used to sharpen the AI. As a result, Polisis’s interpretation matches the law students’ interpretation 88 percent of the time. The entire process is described in a research report. The Swiss collaborated with researchers from the American Universities of Wisconsin and Michigan. The researchers do emphasize that certain ambiguities cannot be resolved if even a human expert cannot resolve them.
As Wired also notes, this is not the first time that researchers have tried to use AI to make the terms of use of online services more transparent. Thus, the Universities of Columbia and Carnegie Mellon came up with UsablePrivacy.org. Human operations to make such documents more transparent have also been around for some time. An example of this is Terms of Service; Didn’t Read.
Polisis and PriBot on Twitter’s terms and conditions