Social, ethical, security and regulatory issues relating to the use of new and evolving technologies such as AI, including generative AI, in our offerings or partnerships, may result in reputational harm and liability, and may cause us to incur additional research and development costs to resolve such issues. As with many innovations, AI presents risks and challenges that could affect its adoption, and therefore our business. No assurance can be provided that our use of AI will enhance our products or services or produce the intended results. For example, AI algorithms may be flawed, insufficient, of poor quality, reflect unwanted forms of bias, or contain other errors or inadequacies, any of which may not be easily detectable and AI, particularly generative AI, has been known to produce false or “hallucinatory” inferences or outputs. If we enable or offer solutions that draw controversy due to their perceived or actual impact on society, we may experience brand or reputational harm, competitive harm or legal liability. Potential government regulation related to AI use and ethics may also increase the burden and cost of research and development in this area, and failure to properly remediate AI usage or ethics issues may cause public confidence in AI to be undermined. AI and machine learning may change the way our industry identifies and responds to cybersecurity threats, and businesses that are slow to adopt or fail to adopt such new technologies may face a competitive disadvantage. The rapid evolution of AI will require the application of resources to develop, test and maintain any potential offerings or partnerships to help ensure that AI is implemented ethically in order to minimize unintended, harmful impact.
In addition, the use of AI may enhance intellectual property, cybersecurity, operational and technological risks. As the regulatory framework for AI and related technologies evolves, it is possible that new laws and regulations will be adopted, or that existing laws and regulations, including intellectual property, privacy, data protection and cybersecurity, consumer protection, competition and equal opportunity laws and regulations, may be interpreted in ways that would affect our business and the ways in which we or our partners use AI or related technologies, our financial condition and our results of operations, including as a result of the cost to comply with such laws or regulations. For example, if we or our third-party AI providers do not have sufficient rights to use the data or other material or content on which AI tools rely, or the output generated by our use of such AI tools, we may incur liability through the violation of such laws, third-party intellectual property, privacy or other rights, or contracts to which we are a party. Moreover, use of generative AI in our code development process, while offering various potential benefits, could also pose certain ownership and security risks with respect to our codebase, given the current legal uncertainties relating to ownership of AI-generated works and the potential for security flaws in output code. Further, potential government regulation related to AI use and ethics may also increase the burden and cost of research and development in this area, and failure to properly remediate AI usage or ethics issues may cause public confidence in AI to be undermined, which could slow adoption of AI in our products and services. In particular, we are monitoring the development of EU AI Act, which was approved in a political agreement in December 2023. We may not be able to anticipate how to respond to these rapidly evolving frameworks, and we may need to expend resources to adjust our operations or offerings in certain jurisdictions if the legal frameworks are inconsistent across jurisdictions. Furthermore, because AI technology itself is highly complex and rapidly developing, it is not possible to predict all of the legal, operational or technological risks that may arise relating to the use of AI.