My frustrations with AI over the last year have grown exponentially. Not only because of its ubiquitous presence, but because its integration has felt out of my control. Nearly every major platform on the internet now has a chat box, personal agent, or ‘friend’. Not only did I not ask for this in the first place – the ads, the constant pressure to adapt or fall behind – but now I can’t even opt out of it. And with growing reports of AI deteriorating our critical thinking skills, the environmental impact data of centres, and concern for its effect on the job market, it’s a tough pill to swallow. 

Before AI models were woven into our everyday lives, their creators were already disregarding consent. The list of public facing trials against AI companies is extensive, mostly for copyright infringement through their illegal usage of media information to train their models. For example, in 2023 the New York Times sued OpenAI for scraping its website for “millions” of articles to use in their model training process. In these cases, it’s not only the media companies which are affected, but also their contributors, whose writing and ideas have now been stolen without their knowledge and permission. 

“Consent has to be specific, informed, freely given, and revocable,” explains Meg Leta Jones, Professor of Communication, Culture, and Technology at Georgetown University. “Tech consent flows usually fail at least a couple of those.” Some positive legislative changes have led to greater user autonomy, mainly with just-in-time pop-ups, where an app will ask you a specific request at the exact moment you try to use it. Leta Jones explains that Apple does this with their “App Tracking Transparency”, where they ask you if they can continue allowing an app to track other apps and websites, or when you get prompted to allow access to your camera or location.

These consensual checkpoints are only effective in particular circumstances. Think about how many times you are prompted for your consent for cookie collection, or the 50-page privacy notice you get every time your phone updates. At this point, you probably just click through the carousel of questions, which is exactly the problem. These pop-ups appear to give you some agency, but the choice is illusory: realistically, no-one is going to read through fifty pages of terms and conditions just to download an app, nor would everyone have the legal knowledge to truly understand what they were agreeing to if they did. Saying no to cookies can sometimes come with a monetary cost. Saying no to a privacy notice might mean you can’t update your device. The consequences here acts as a powerful incentive – the refusal to consent often means no updates, the device slowing down and certain applications no longer working, until eventually you’re left with a barely functioning black box. So sure, it’s a ‘choice’, but clearly a coercive one. 

We also have the choice to reject technology altogether – deleting our TikTok accounts, chucking our smartphones into the Thames – but this can carry serious social implications. “Platforms have increasingly become the infrastructure of our social, economic, and civic lives,” explains Helen Hester, Professor of Gender, Technology, and Cultural Politics at The University of West London. “Refusal is then pretty costly, which makes exiting impractical. You cannot meaningfully consent when refusing means losing access to social life itself – to aspects of work, communication, political participation, and basic coordination.” 

This becomes increasingly relevant with Google’s recent announcement that they are transitioning to an AI-forward search that will open an entirely AI generated page with tailored results to each user. When search engines prioritise AI over the standardized search process, regular searching naturally worsens and, once again, makes it incredibly difficult to opt out. This forced integration normalizes the daily use of artificial intelligence without considering the implications it has. “It has been a matter of default integration, gradual displacement of non-AI options, and retrospective adjustment of terms. This is not consent. It is managed inevitability,” explains Hester. 

What does consent mean when you are not the user of a system, but are nonetheless continuously processed by it?

Sometimes the threat to consent can be even quieter. Ring doorbells and Waymos, the self-driving cars with 29 cameras and “full 360 vision”, both work to normalise neighbourhood surveillance in their constant recording. Most people are aware of traffic surveillance, but it’s different when the cameras are on your doorstep monitoring every time you enter and leave your home, who’s coming in and out, or who’s just walking by. Even if you are aware they are recording you, the information about where those recordings are going, who they are going to, and what they’re being used for are less widely known. “What does consent mean when you are not the user of a system, but are nonetheless continuously processed by it?” Hester posits, “The risk is not only overt misuse, such as covert sexualised recording or upskirting-type practices. It is the broader normalisation of ambient scrutiny, where being visually present increasingly means being legible to machine systems you did not consent to enter.”

The limited options we are being served today are not informative enough for the user to fully comprehend what they are agreeing to. True consent entails understanding, alternatives, and freedom from coercion, but the reality is no one has time for that. “I don’t particularly want to exert myself figuring out the ins and outs of the contemporary legal platform landscape – and I research digital culture for a living!” Hester quips.

So, are we in a tech consent crisis? Hester says yes, undeniably, but with the caveat that making ‘digital consent’ more meaningful and robust is, at this point, not enough to address the way Big Tech continues to encroach on our freedom and privacy.  Instead, we should be demanding more public governing and collective agreement over how these technologies are implemented into our lives, which includes questioning whether they are really necessary or desirable to begin with. If we want to opt out, we cannot do it alone– we need a full factory reset.