UOKiK, Poland - Detecting and combating dark patterns with Artificial Intelligence

Polish Office of Competition and Consumer Protection (UOKiK) is embarking on a project funded by the EU to develop a methodology for conducting proceedings on dark patterns and delivering a Proof of Concept for an AI-powered tool to detect dark patterns.

The project will take a holistic approach to the identification of dark patterns (sometimes known as deceptive design) for the purposes of enforcement, aiming to fully understand the design, occurrence and effects of dark patterns on consumer experiences. This will involve: a sweep to screen consumer facing websites and identify those with the highest incidences of dark patterns; a consumer survey about the experience of dark patterns; and neuromarketing tests to examine the neurobiological human reactions that occur when exposed to dark patterns.

All these results will inform the next stage which will be the development of an AI-powered dark patterns detector.