Which? and generative AI

At Which? we adopt an innovative and considered approach to new technologies - both in considering the benefits and potential harms for consumers, as well as their application to our work. As the UK’s not-for-profit consumer champion, here to make life simpler, fairer and safer for everyone, we are taking the same approach to the rapid development of generative AI - both in how we intend to use it in our own work and how we ensure that we help to protect consumers against resultant current and future harms.

Our approach to generative AI focuses on the following three applications to benefit UK consumers.

1. Informing our advocacy on behalf of all UK consumers

Foundation models, including large language models and those behind other types of generative AI, have the potential to benefit society greatly. However, they also pose a risk to consumers by turbo charging existing harms and creating new ones. As a consumer organisation, we are committed to developing our understanding of how this technology is being used in consumer markets, and to being a strong voice advocating for the necessary consumer rights and protections to be in place and enforced.

2. Enabling us to continue to provide trusted, independent reviews and advice

At Which?, we have an unwavering commitment to providing impartial reviews and advice that consumers can trust.  We believe that human expertise and creativity remain at the core of delivering against this commitment.  However, we have identified ways in which generative AI can improve productivity, enabling our researchers, writers and editors to produce more and better content.

We will take the following approach to the use of generative AI in relation to our published content:

• being transparent about how and where generative AI has played a substantial part in the creation of content, for instance in generating an audio version of a print article,
• ensuring there is human oversight when using generative AI tools, and
• having governance structures and guidelines in place to manage our use of generative AI tools.

We will provide an impartial perspective on the benefits and downsides of generative AI for consumers through our content.

In order to maintain a trusted source of information for consumers and to avoid misrepresentation of our content, we do not provide permission for our proprietary content to be used to train the large language models of generative AI tools.  Whilst we take steps to prevent misuse of our name and proprietary content by generative AI tools, it is still possible that we might be incorrectly attributed in the outputs of these tools, or for the tools to share incomplete or incorrect information.  Be sure to check our website and publications for our official position.

3. Innovating to benefit consumers

Generative AI has the potential to transform the ways in which consumers access information to answer their questions. We expect it will offer Which? the potential to deliver helpful new ways to access our unique reviews and advice, enable us to provide new services and allow us to expand our impact as the UK’s consumer champion.  Therefore, we are experimenting with the use of generative AI to develop innovative new products and services that help us to serve evolving consumer needs into the future.  We will do so in a responsible way, applying the same principles of human oversight and transparency as we apply to the use of generative AI in our content.