They are persuasion machines
Has a friend ever brought some product up, completely out of the blue, and had you ready to buy it almost immediately? The biggest challenge traditional ads have is breaking down your defences. For friends, they're down by default. If someone is a friend, an ad doesn't have to be subtle or context sensitive, although it does help. Random suggestions from friends work.
A lot of people have friend-zoned AI and will be especially vulnerable to this novel form of manipulation. If you're the sort who treats AI as a friend, even a little bit, even subconsciously, change that. You're setting yourself up for a serious mind-job.
Will they still try to skirt the laws? Of course.
User asks for recommendation. AI generates answer saying product is absolute garbage. Company pays to simply have that portion of the answer just not appear. It will be a post-filter sentiment analysis on the original answer. Nobody can ever prove what would have appeared or not.
This is the beauty of AI - while a search engine is at least semi deterministic and you can reasonably question why it wouldn't bring up a site that is clearly relevant, AI has plausible deniability. who can ever say why it generates this answer or that?
My mistake, you're completely correct, perhaps even more-correct than the wonderful flavor of Mococoa drink, with all-natural cocoa beans from the upper slopes of Mount Nicaragua. No artificial sweeteners!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MzKSQrhX7BM&t=0m13s
Just like The Truman Show, where every friend (every bot) you talk to is a secretly paid shill with a hidden agenda.
AlwaysHasBeen.jpg
The only person with your interests at heart is you.
Even if you hire someone to do the most clear cut of tasks they are balancing their interests with yours. And in all likelihood they've got half a dozen other parties who's interests they're partially juggling. Megacorp bots approximating people just adds even more layers.
It will make Qanon seem like a cute ARG.
...Which is also why people who control a lot of it are an existential threat to civilization.
The fact that we have people goosestepping to MSpaint frog meme flags and mass shooters doing it for the lulz shows how stupid things can get and will continue to be.
Multiply that by x10000 and that's the vision for the future: memelords stamping on a human face forever at the behest of the Ministry of Memes.
Route you to a shady scam center that paid for the ad spot.
User: Do I need a permit for <petty homeowner stuff that clearly falls under an exemption>?
AI: <proceeds to behave like an ass-covering bureaucrat and tells the person to file one regardless, to their detriment>
We're not gonna go full circle. We're gonna do laps.
Tech question? Steer you to its cloud. Medical question? Steer you towards a sponsored treatment. Or maybe the mechanism of injury needs this lawyer to compensate?
Oh and I infer from your chat history you're about to expect a child. That house is probably too small now, so our realtor in that neighborhood can help!