arXiv cs.CY· A Pranav, Luke Hartmann, Anne Lauscher·· 9 天前AI 评分39
德国创业公司 AI 洗白审计：营销宣称与认知的混合方法研究
Auditing AI-Washing in German Startups: A Mixed-Methods Study of Marketing Claims and Perceptions
AI 导读
一项针对德国创业公司市场的审计研究，用七维度标注手册分析了 100 家创业公司并访谈 63 位专家，发现 AI 能力夸大表现为三种形式：无可核查证据的宣称、无方法论的性能数字、不承认局限的宣称。38% 的样本被标记存在中度或严重伦理问题，涉及监控及受监管领域的自动化决策。研究建议将创业公司的 AI 宣称纳入披露要求，并向监管机构、投资者和消费者保护机构提供该标注手册用于常规审计。
正文 · 原文
Abstract:AI-washing is the use of 'AI' as a marketing term where products' claims are exaggerated, likely to capture the hype from investors and consumers. In this paper, we examine how startups market AI and how people perceive those claims. We audited the German startup market, applying an annotation codebook of seven dimensions to 100 startups and conducting 63 expert interviews. Startups exaggerated AI capability in three forms: claims without inspectable evidence, performance numbers without methodology, and claims without acknowledged limits. The capabilities they claimed rarely matched the underlying system, and consumers who had encountered exaggerated claims before withdrew trust from later AI marketing. AI-washing has also been linked to the marketing of unethical products: 38% of the sample were flagged for moderate or serious ethical concern, in domains such as surveillance and automated decisions in regulated fields. Together these findings show how AI-washing happens: founders exaggerate capability to attract investors who reward AI branding they cannot verify, and consumers in unfamiliar domains take the marketing at face value. We recommend that startup AI claims be brought under disclosure requirements, with the codebook offered to regulators, investors, and consumer-protection bodies for routine audits.
| Comments: | Accepted at AIES 2026 |
| Subjects: | Computers and Society (cs.CY) |
| Cite as: | arXiv:2610.11788 [cs.CY] |
| (or arXiv:2610.11788v1 [cs.CY] for this version) | |
| https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2610.11788 arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration) |
Submission history
From: A Pranav [view email]
[v1]
Thu, 8 Oct 2026 12:03:18 UTC (84 KB)
来源：arXiv cs.CY · arxiv.org