
Ethical Dilemmas in AI-Driven Advertising
Chapter from the book:
Özkaynar,
K.
&
Abbasoğlu,
Ş.
(eds.)
2025.
Consumer, Marketing, AI: Dark Sides and Ethics.
Synopsis
Artificial intelligence (AI) has transformed the advertising sector, improving efficiency, personalizing, and consumer involvement. Big data analytics, programmatic advertising, and automated decision-making combined in AI-driven advertising create tailored marketing campaigns with hitherto unheard-of accuracy. But these advances raise moral issues that create issues about consumer manipulation, privacy, prejudice, and openness. The capability of artificial intelligence to employ consumer information to allow hyper-personalization raises issues about consumer autonomy and data protection laws. Also, algorithmic bias within AI-powered advertising has the potential to reinforce social injustices, thus encouraging discriminative measures. Deepfakes, chatbots, and voice assistants used during advertising are also crossing moral limits because deceptive measures are employed to manipulate consumer behavior without open consent. Emphasizing the need to ensure strong regulations and corporate responsibility, this chapter critiques the moral issues raised about artificial intelligence-powered advertising. Some of the core issues like data privacy, fairness within algorithms, and disinformation are discussed along with some probable solutions like moral AI design principles, openness regulations, and measures to ensure regulatory compliance. At the end, the chapter supports a rational strategy that capitalizes on the capability of artificial intelligence but follows moral principles to encourage customer trust and eco-friendly advertising measures.