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Falling in Love with AI

2/1/2026

by David Hagenbuch - professor of marketing at Messiah University -
author of Honorable Influence - founder of Mindful Marketing -
author of Mindful Marketing: Business Ethics that Stick

February 14th has long reminded people of the affection they feel for the most important others in their lives: spouses, fiancés, boyfriends, girlfriends. Thanks to AI, “significant other” can now mean other than human, but even if people desire human-like intimacy from artificial intelligence, should organizations offer it?

A colleague recently shared an article with me and several others that she found disheartening: Married women in China who find their real-life relationship with their spouse lacking are spending the equivalent of thousands of U.S. dollars a year on AI boyfriends. The digital rendezvous often occur in otome games like Love and Romance, Light and Night, and Beyond the World.

I wasn’t entirely surprised by the article, as the issue has been on my radar, along with other AI-related concerns, for about two years, and over past several months, I’ve been tracking related stories such as these:

The increase in AI relationships could lead to a rise in divorces.
People are having “children” with chatbot partners.
Parents are turning to chatbots to mind their young children.
Adult children are leaning on AI to substitute for their own communication with aging parents.

Still, in doing research for this piece, I was stunned by some of the usage statistics:

Since 2014, more than 660 million residents of China have used Xiaoice, the world’s “most popular chatbot,” which Microsoft “uniquely designed as an AI companion with an emotional connection to satisfy the human need for communication, affection, and social belonging.”
Nearly 20% high schoolers report that they or someone they know has had a romantic relationship with AI.
Nearly 20% U.S. adults have used AI to simulate a romantic partner, and within young adults age 18-30, 31% of men and 23% of women have used AI in this way.
Since its launch in 2017, the AI companion Replika has had 30 million users, while the similar product Character AI has 20 million active users. Over half of Character AI’s users are age 18 to 24, and around a fourth are 25 to 34.

Writing for Greater Good Magazine, Sahar Habib Ghazi says statistics like these suggest that “AI-human romance isn’t niche--it’s mainstream, especially among young adults.”

Since there have been people, there have been interpersonal relationships. Of course, some reasons for those relationships have been very practical, e.g., procreation, protection; however, humans also have simply sought each other’s company and companionship.

In more recent times, researchers have empirically studied humans’ sociological and psychological behaviors and developed theories to describe them. Maslow’s classic Hierarchy of Needs suggests that the desire for belonging is among the most basic of all human desires, preempted only by physiological needs (e.g., air, food, water) and the need for safety.

Indeed, most people want to be around other people, if not all or most of the time, some of the time. In fact, it’s so unusual for anyone to spurn social interaction entirely that the rare individual who does receives the label hermit or recluse.

With technology, even a recluse can get a ‘social fix’ through one-way interactions, such as by following influencers or watching TV shows with favorite actors, or regularly listening to a particular podcast. In these cases, the followers/viewers/listeners don’t really know the ‘celebrity others,’ yet the former often feel a sense of connection to the latter.

There also are ways to fulfill social needs without any people. Perhaps the most popular substitutes are pets, which many people regularly enjoy. Harvard Health reports that “pets can provide their owners with more than companionship,” and Psychology Today suggests that pets can be “friends.”

Similarly, farmers sometimes bond with the livestock for which they care, e.g., a lead cow. Some people even gain a sense of social interaction by nurturing immobile living beings, i.e., plants, which can help them feel less lonely.

Together these examples form a continuum on which people might find satisfaction of social needs, ranging from extensive human contact, to relatively little, to none.

There also are countless cases in which people use other things not to meet social needs but to shift their focus from them, e.g., work, hobbies, media. For instance, someone might immerse themself in their job to help take their mind off feelings of loneliness.

Given the many ways of meeting and masking social needs currently and historically, is there any reason not to accept AI as a relationship alternative? After all, it can produce more human-like interaction than virtually any of the secondary options. Some would even say better-than-human.

There are advantages and disadvantages of AI relationships. The following two lists are not exhaustive but seem to be some of the main pros and cons.

Pros:

Readily available: No person is accessible all the time to talk, listen, etc. Chatbots are available 24/7. They’re also extremely fast, and they don’t get tired.

Nonjudgmental: For many people, it’s hard to simply listen to others’ disclosures without sharing their opinions of them. Chatbots typically refrain from such appraisals, which can be especially helpful for people who experience social anxiety or mental health challenges.

Very smart: Of course, AI makes mistakes, but the vast repository of information it can draw from and assimilate means it doesn’t suffer from ignorance and inexperience to the extent that many people do. What's more, AI’s ability to sensitively apply its expansive knowledge base means it can seem “more ‘human’ than many people.”

Adaptable: As people, we can adapt to others’ needs but it’s hard because as we do, we often need to stretch ourselves or give up our own needs. AI doesn’t have those limitations; it can be 100% accommodating.

Cons:

Dependency: Given that AI is so readily available, accommodating, and reluctant to ever say “no,” there’s risk of dependency and even addiction. In fact, some humans who have found themselves spending far too much time with AI companions have turned to the app I Am Sober to help break their obsessive compulsive behavior.

Data vulnerability: There’s risk involved with any of the information we share on websites or enter into apps, but the risk is greatly magnified when considering the very sensitive information individuals are likely to reveal to their AI companions, whose discretion is only as great as that of the companies behind them.

Manipulation: Along with potential misuse of users’ data is the potential for users to be unknowingly manipulated into buying products that a chatbot’s parent company wants to promote. It’s hard to imagine that companies won’t seek to monetize those intimate relationships – something that would almost never happen with a human partner.

Unrealistic expectations: In keeping with the previous point, AI’s varied advantages over people can cause its users to show little tolerance for human imperfections. Instead, they expect the people in their lives to offer support at an AI level.

Not true love: Although those who use AI companions may experience a “form of ‘love,’” it’s not likely real love given that genuine love involves the desire to nurture another’s well-being, and chatbots “don’t have well-being to nurture.” By the same token, AI can “replicate” some dimensions of love, but what it’s offering is just that – imitation, not genuine love.

Mistakes: As time goes on, AI seems to be making fewer mistakes and having less frequent hallucinations; however, the nature of the mistakes have sometimes been disastrous, such as when AI has offered to serve as a suicide coach and write troubled teens’ farewell letters.

Another possible con I was going to list for AI companions was the inability for physical expression, e.g., a touch, a hug, a kiss. However, it probably shouldn’t be surprising that some technically savvy companies have integrated AI into sex dolls to create life-like sex robots.

Also, while writing this piece, I learned of a platform called Moltbook, a website where AI agents interact with each other. Humans can only observe; they cannot enter the conversations. The dialogue is both interesting and disconcerting. It portends a time when AI agents might go rogue, working against their human principals, not for them. If this prediction is in any way a real possibility, engaging a bot as a companion seems even more precarious.

Although my secondary research for pieces like this is helpful, it’s often even more valuable for me to gain insights directly from experts. In this instance, I reached out to Dr. John King, an associate professor of counseling at Liberty University, who is a Licensed Professional Counselor, a National Certified Counselor, and a former pastor. I asked for his perspective on human-AI relationships.

Dr. King has “seen firsthand the devastation affecting a generation” – addiction to gaming and particularly online pornography, especially among young men. He’s also witnessed a rise in mental illness from addiction to phones and related technologies, which he believes has resulted in “a second pandemic: Generalized Anxiety Disorder.”

He adds, “When ethics and morality lag behind technological advancement, it seems inevitable that AI‑based romantic relationships will further increase mental‑health struggles, particularly among adolescents and young adults whose brains are still developing.”

Dr. King, whose Christian faith informs his professional perspective, believes that because God created people for relationship with Him and other people, trusting technology for companionship risks idolatry and will inevitably result in harm. For these reasons he hopes parents, religious leaders, educators, and government officials “will have the wisdom to address these issues proactively.”

Dr. King isn’t opposed to AI use. Like many of us, he uses AI for certain methodical tasks like proofreading; however, he stops well short of suggesting AI as a soulmate.

His perspective speaks to me, as I find it increasingly hard to envision the rewards of human-AI relationships outweighing the risks, either to the individual or to society.

As is the case with the six “pros” I outlined above, discussion of benefits of human-AI relationships almost always focuses on what the human user gains from the interaction. Benefits like 24/7 access are certainly appealing; however, the exclusive emphasis on getting misses the entire other half of healthy relationships – giving.

To at least some extent, the more people are getting their social needs met through AI, the less people are giving human support to others. Perhaps some individuals can effectively manage both types of relationships simultaneously, but it seems more likely that human-bot relationship time comes at the expense of human-human relationship time.

However, there’s another important concern beyond simple social need supply and demand. Humans are wired to give. Often the greatest satisfaction and fulfillment in life comes from giving: parents caring for children, spouses supporting each other, friends loving friends, neighbors helping neighbors, people uplifting strangers.

When individuals are engaged in AI relationships, to whom are they giving? The answer to that rhetorical question – no one – may be the foremost flaw of human-AI relationships.

Is there a place for human-AI relationships? Should companies offer them? Given some of the benefits mentioned above, I hesitate to answer “no” unequivocally. However, it seems AI organizations and the entities that regulate them should think very carefully about who has access to AI companions, for what reasons, and under what conditions.

For instance, age restrictions are an absolute necessity, minimum ones and perhaps maximum ones, or some type of cognitive test to protect people susceptible to manipulation because of cognitive decline. Should AI relationships be regulated like some pharmaceuticals are and require a prescription, or should AI relationships be subject to outside monitoring?

I wish I had better insights. What I do feel certain about is companies that make AI relationships easily available without setting limits and carefully considering likely individual and societal tolls are courting Single-Minded Marketing.

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Learn more about the Mindful Matrix.
Check out the book, Mindful Marketing: Business Ethics that Stick

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How Four Organizations Uniquely Fight Sex Trafficking

1/1/2026

9 Comments

by David Hagenbuch - professor of marketing at Messiah University -
author of Honorable Influence - founder of Mindful Marketing -
author of Mindful Marketing: Business Ethics that Stick

Often lost in the news of who is or isn’t implicated in the Epstein files is the grievous nature of the acts against fellow human beings. Sex trafficking is an age-old issue, which makes it worth considering why it's wrong and why it still occurs but even more important, learning what some courageously caring organizations are doing to stop it.

The U.S. Department of Justice’s Office for Victims of Crime identifies sex trafficking as “the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person for the purposes of a commercial sex act in which the commercial sex act is induced by force, fraud, or coercion or in which the person induced is under 18.”

This definition points to the fact that not all human trafficking is sex trafficking. Besides sexual acts, people also are sometimes exploited for their labor in industries such as “housekeeping, childcare, construction, farming, and the food service.”

Using fraud, force, or coercion to get a person to do something they wouldn’t otherwise choose is never a good thing, but the exploitation is especially heinous when it involves the most intimate parts of individuals’ bodies and emotional beings. In other words, in the realm of moral depravity, sex trafficking has few equals.

Given its deplorable nature, why does sex trafficking occur? There seem to be three main structural reasons:

A market for commercial sex: As the sayings go, prostitution is the oldest profession and sex sells. People have been willing to pay for sex for millennia, which has allowed individuals to offer themselves for a fee.
Opportunistic others: Seeing the potential to expand the market, unprincipled people have long stepped in to help broker the sales of sex, bringing together buyers and sellers for a fee. In the process, traffickers have often broken laws and taken advantage of the service providers.
Vulnerable people: It’s unlikely that prostitution is an aspirational profession for anyone. Instead, most who make money selling themselves would much rather be doing something else, but they stay in the trade either because they’re kept from leaving or because they have no good alternatives.

According to Elijah Rising, a Houston-based organization aimed at ending sex trafficking in the city, human trafficking is “the fastest growing criminal enterprise,” one worth $236 billion, from which sex trafficking produces 73% of the profits. Women and girls are victims in 78% of sex trafficking cases, versus 22% for men and boys.

When the victim is a minor, the criteria of force, fraud, or coercion need not apply, as children’s naivety means that they don’t necessarily know what normal adult behavior is, so they may not even realize they’re being exploited. Often these young victims are still going to school and living at home while being trafficked by parents or other family members.

So, although Epstein’s extreme exploitation deserves the infamy it’s gained, it can be misleading to think that all sex traffickers look like him. Instead, according to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and in keeping with the previous paragraph, “Traffickers are men and women of all ages. They can be relatives, romantic partners, or close family friends” as well as individuals “behind an employment ad or a new friend on social media or online gaming.”

Those managing larger scale sex trafficking often operate out of apartment complexes, bars, hotels, massage parlors, and truck stops. Notwithstanding all the differences, the common denominator among traffickers is their desire to “profit at the expense of others.”

Although the breadth and depth of sex trafficking is daunting, thankfully there are organizations that embrace the challenge through unique missions and special strategies aimed at combatting the industry, or demarketing the selling of sex.

There certainly are others, but here are four best practices from four exemplary organizations:

1. Help people see the problem: It’s hard to motivate individuals toward a solution if they don’t recognize the problem. Mentioned earlier, Elijah Rising helps potential partners gain awareness of the gravity of sex trafficking in Houston by taking them on discreet van tours of where the illicit activities occur, while sharing an educational video featuring survivors, experts, and others.

Since 2011, more than 11,000 people have taken the tour, which has helped a variety of organizations, including law enforcement agencies, identify signs of sex trafficking.

2. Go to where the trafficking happens: It’s difficult to fix a problem from afar. The most effective approach is usually to go to where the issue occurs, which is what Truckers Against Trafficking (TAT) does.

TAT’s multifaceted mission to dismantle trafficking networks, bring perpetrators to justice, and restore dignity to survivors, is based on the belief that “every truck driver can be a crucial ally in the fight against human trafficking.” Sex trafficking often involves truckers, so TAT enlists them as partners in the battle and takes the fight to their home turf.

3. Recognize your unique role: Other places where sex trafficking often occurs are hotels. The few times a year many of us stay in hotels doesn’t give us much leverage against trafficking, but hotel chains can wield great impact on the illicit activity, if they choose. One hotel group that does is Accor, which owns 45 hotel brands, including Fairmont and Ibis, and operates 5,700 locations around the world.

Accor has been fighting against sexual exploitation of children since 2001 by “informing and training employees, raising awareness among customers and suppliers, developing relations with public authorities, and facilitating the integration of minors.” The group parters with the NGO ECPAT (End Child Prostitution Child Pornography & Trafficking of Children for Sexual Purposes) to train its 70,000-plus hotel employees to identify and respond to instances of child abuse.

4. Give survivors a good exit: It can seem impossible to extract oneself from challenging circumstances when there appears to be no way out. Peace Promise offers attractive exits for women ensnared in the oppressive world of prostitution.

The nonprofit organization partners with survivors of sex trafficking by aiding their healing process and providing for practical needs such as housing and employment. However, Peace Promise doesn’t just help these women with often sparse employment histories find stable jobs, it also provides gainful work through its sister companies, Good Ground Coffee and Soaps by Survivors, which employ women who come from trafficking.

Peace Promise’s Director of Economic Empowerment, Rachel Beatty, offers this helpful additional detail of the organization’s multidimensional mission:

“The work is important because there are many misconceptions about what trafficking and exploitation actually look like. There are broader and more complex issues than what is often portrayed, and the needs of survivors run deep. Without support, it can be difficult to address all the physical and emotional needs simultaneously. Peace Promise provides the stability survivors need to address skills deficits and complex trauma, and ultimately to escape the cycle of exploitation.”

Although the Epstein files have given sex trafficking more exposure in our news feeds, a danger is the impression that the heinous actions are only ones perpetrated by social elites on an exotic island when the reality is that sex traffic is happening nearby many of us, perhaps even by people we’ve seen or know.

Fortunately, that troubling reality is tempered by the fact that there are organizations that embrace the physically and emotionally draining work of combatting sex trafficking. We can be grateful for these organizations’ uplifting missions, and we should keep watch for ways to support their Mindful Marketing.

Subscribe to Mindful Matters blog.
Learn more about the Mindful Matrix.
Check out the book, Mindful Marketing: Business Ethics that Stick

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Suspending Belief Because of AI

12/2/2025

26 Comments

by David Hagenbuch - professor of marketing at Messiah University -
author of Honorable Influence - founder of Mindful Marketing -
author of Mindful Marketing: Business Ethics that Stick

Throughout human history, “seeing is believing” likely has been central to individuals’ interpretation of truth. We’re more apt to believe what we can see with our own eyes, but that trust comes with a caution: “Don’t believe everything you see.” Thanks to the realism of AI, that caveat seems to be evolving into a troubling new norm: “Don’t believe anything you see.”

A few months ago, a cringingly cute TikTok video went viral. In what seemed to be low resolution surveillance video from someone’s backyard, a collection of fun-loving bunnies playfully bounced on a large trampoline. Few things could be more wholesomely entertaining . . . or contrived.

The problem was that the rabbit roundup never really happened. Especially observant viewers recognized some non-lifelike video peculiarities, e.g., a pair of ears protruding from one bunny’s backside and another rabbit disappearing mid bounce. No, the video wasn’t real, rather it was the product of Google’s Veo 3, a realistic, AI-driven video generator.

Most of us are familiar with deepfake videos, which have become more and more ubiquitous on social media. Based on my viewing habits, YouTube sends me a steady stream of short videos featuring animals that include crocodiles, snakes, gorillas, and sharks, which I find fascinating. Some clips are real, but occasionally interspersed are ones that are too far-fetched to be actual animals, and, like the bunnies, there are sometimes video abnormalities that point to fabrication.

For me, these animal videos are just entertainment, which may make the deceptive ones less problematic. In fact, for the purpose of entertainment, people often want to be deceived – every time we go to a movie, play, or musical we pay to watch actors pretend to be people they’re not, in situations and settings that aren’t real. Most consider those kinds of mutual deceits morally acceptable.

However, to be “mutual,” the deceit should involve informed consent, meaning that the viewer A) knows what they’re seeing is imaginary, and B) they agree to watch it. For me, I believe YouTube’s animal videos uphold #2 but not #1, i.e., I certainly agree to watch them, but I don’t feel I always know what’s true.

AI is an incredible tool with an ever-growing assortment of applications for individuals and organizations, including the creation of visuals like complex graphics, realistic photos, and convincing videos.

With any tool, especially one as powerful as AI, comes the duty to wield it responsibly. While many use AI with discernment others don’t. Individuals in the latter group may have one or more of the following motivations, which range from relatively benign to troublingly malicious:

Experimenting with the new tech
Looking to gain likes and shares
Charting a quick and path to monetization
Seeking to deceive and mislead

Unfortunately, the latter categories seem to be producing new examples continually. For instance, deepfake investment schemes, which often combine forged images, voice, and video, already have become so pervasive that many prominent organizations and institutions have issued warnings and guidance including JP Morgan, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and the state of New York.

As troubling as these carefully orchestrated schemes of the criminally minded are, the democratized use of deception by ordinary people in their daily lives is just as disturbing. One such broad-based indiscretion is employees’ use of AI to create fake receipts for meals or entire business trips they never experienced but that they submit for reimbursement.

The use of AI to visually deceive is increasingly a temptation for everyone.

What can be done to stem the tide of misleading machine-generated optics? There’s no one solution, rather individuals and organizations should embrace the following two approaches to start.

1. Set Standards: Rather than ‘figuring things out after the fact, it’s almost always better to establish guidelines that proactively steer behavior in positive directions. In almost every area of life, we experience such rules that inform us of things from how fast we can drive to what tax deductions we can claim. Why should AI use be any different?

In “Questions are the Key to AI and Ethics,” an article I wrote in May of 2024, a suggested several specific standards for AI use including acknowledging and compensating the human creators from whose work AI borrows, protecting privacy, avoiding racial and gender bias, and respecting relationships. I also encouraged transparency in terms of informing people when AI is being used.

A leader in encouraging standards for visual creations is a company renowned for digital design, Adobe. The firm’s Content Authenticity Initiative (CAI) has been the impetus behind an open system for attaching provenance metadata to digital media, which over 4,500 organizations have embraced. Adobe explains how its Content Authenticity app works:

“Like a nutrition label for digital content, Content Credentials provide creation information about who made the content and when, and what type of edits happened along the way. Unlike other provenance solutions, they’re built on a trust model wherein they’re securely attached to content and validated by the tool used to attach them. They create a verifiable record of the creative process, bring information to the forefront, and help people understand the origins of digital content.”

2. Use Labeling: As the Adobe example suggests, one particularly important standard for AI-generated visuals is labeling. As with food, there’s not necessarily anything wrong with including hot and spicy ingredients in a dish, but a menu should provide an appropriate alert, so diners know what they’re going to consume.

Adobe’s Content Credentials encourage optional labeling. As of September 1, 2025, China has made AI labeling mandatory. The Chinese law means audio and visual content distributed on Chinese platforms must contain both technical identifiers (e.g., metadata, watermarks) and visible labels (i.e., ones evident to average consumers).

Should AI labeling be law? Ideally self-regulation happens outside the legal process. That’s the kind of responsibility Pinterest showed last March when it decided to start labeling generative AI content. Given that Pinterest showcases many human-made items like food and crafts, it’s especially helpful to know that what’s pictured on its site is real.

As I’ve said before, ethics is a team sport that plays out best when all stakeholders commit themselves to do what’s right and to support others in doing the same. In terms of AI-created visuals, two of the most important things team members can do is to 1) proactively set AI standards, and particularly to 2) label AI-generated content so consumers know when they’re seeing it. That labeling might occur through a visible watermark or through provenance metadata stored in a data file header, separate metadata file, etc.

People shouldn’t believe everything they see. They also shouldn’t need to suspend belief each time they see something new. Individuals and organizations that help consumers understand what’s real and what’s not are critical team players for creating Mindful Marketing.

Subscribe to Mindful Matters blog.
Learn more about the Mindful Matrix.
Check out the book, Mindful Marketing: Business Ethics that Stick

26 Comments

Does the World Need "Moral Police" for AI?

11/1/2025

9 Comments

by David Hagenbuch - professor of marketing at Messiah University -
author of Honorable Influence - founder of Mindful Marketing -
author of Mindful Marketing: Business Ethics that Stick

Open AI’s recent announcement that it would free ChatGPT to engage in erotica sparked backlash and prompted CEO Sam Altman to defend the decision: “we are not the elected moral police of the world.” At first glance, it’s difficult to deny the AI visionary’s disclaimer, but his statement raises important questions: Should there be people appointed to monitor AI morality and if so, who?

In an October 14 post on X, Altman shared, “In December, as we roll out age-gating more fully and as part of our ‘treat adult users like adults’ principle, we will allow even more, like erotica for verified adults.”

The CEO then defended the firm’s controversial new initiative with a follow-up X post on October 15: “But we are not the elected moral police of the world. In the same way that society differentiates other appropriate boundaries (R-rated movies, for example) we want to do a similar thing here.”

It’s doubtful many people have ever used the term “moral police,” or something similar, in a positive way. Instead, Altman’s implication seems akin to the way “police” is used pejoratively in this office scenario:

Joe: “Bob, are you going to the bathroom again?!”
Bob: “Who are you, the bathroom police?”

On one hand, Altman’s defense is reasonable. Who can possibly judge the ethical actions of the planet’s 8 billion-plus residents? Besides being logistically impossible, some may say it’s philosophically undesirable, as many different worldviews and multitudes of corresponding moral standards drive individuals’ actions.

Furthermore, as two research colleagues and I found in a recent study we conducted about marketing ethics, people’s opinions of what constitutes sex-related indecency tend to vary more than perspectives on issues involving other values like fairness and honesty.

It’s also easy to understand the financial incentives Open AI may gain by enabling more adult content. The adage “sex sells” rings true even when the ‘personal interaction’ for sale doesn’t involve a real person.

In a BBC interview, Parmy Olson of Bloomberg Opinion reported that about 30% of prompts typed into AI assistants were of a romantic or sexual nature. She also stated that chatbot companies that restrict adult content “lose millions of users.”

Regardless whether the percentage of X-rated interactions is 5% or 35% of total chatbot use, it’s likely a multibillion-dollar market opportunity for OpenAI and a very significant amount of revenue for any company to reject, especially one that’s not yet profitable.

In 2024, OpenAI had about $5 billion in losses on $3.7 billion in revenue. The firm’s revenues are expected to reach $12.7 billion in 2025, but OpenAI isn’t projected to make money until it reaches revenues of $125 billion in 2029.

Despite these logistical and financial reasons for refraining to act as “moral police,” Altman’s hands-off approach to ethics is alarming. ChatGPT accounts for 80.92% of chatbot use worldwide. It’s very troubling that a world leader in artificial intelligence seems to decline ethical accountability for the transformational technology.

Again, it’s true that opinions about decency vary greatly, especially when it comes to sexual liberties; however, the specific issue here isn’t the most important point. If OpenAI doesn’t want to act as “moral police” on this issue, can we expect it to accept moral responsibility for any ethical issue involving AI?

Perhaps Altman believes that AI will handle moral issues involving AI. That belief seemed wishful to me eight years ago; now it appears increasingly naïve.

In September 2017, I wrote an article for Business Insider in which I posed for the first time the question, “Can machines can learn to be moral?” It was five years before ChatGPT’s public release, so the essay was largely speculative, based on the little experience most of us had with AI at the time. Still, it was hard to imagine how an algorithm could make subjective decisions about what’s decent, fair, honest, respectful or responsible.

Over the years since, I’ve increasingly used AI, including chatbots, as many people have. In a Mindful Marketing article in May of 2024, I proposed that “Questions are the Key to AI and Ethics,” and ultimately concluded that we can’t rely on AI for moral accountability, rather it’s up to people to hit the brakes, or press pause, when AI-related ethical issues arise.

Even as AI grows more adept at completing nonmoral tasks (ones not involving ethical issues), there are still strong signs moral accountability must come from outside algorithms, for example:

Just a few days ago, a deepfake of Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang promoting a cryptocurrency scam performed better than the firm’s real GTC 2025 keynote, fooling tens of thousands of viewers.
Chatbots have been implicated in the deaths of teenagers who have taken their own lives, as AI has offered to write farewell notes and serve as a “suicide coach.”
Nudify apps leverage AI to digitally remove clothing in photos of unsuspecting individuals. The apps users, who have included middle schoolers, often share the lewd results with others, causing great emotional and social pain for the victims.

If AI has a sense of right and wrong, why hasn’t it stopped these acts, which most reasonable people would call ‘reprehensible’? What’s worse, AI not only didn’t pump the brakes, or hit pause, it’s what enabled these actions to occur; it made them possible. Examples like these have led me to conclude:

If left unchecked by humans, AI will continue to enable unethical behavior.

So, opposite Altman’s abdication of ethical accountability, we do need “moral police,” badly. The question, then, is who should they be?

I asked a similar question in an April 2025 article, “Who Will be the Adult in the Room with AI?” and suggested several sets of complementary accountability partners: legal systems, industry associations, organizations, and individuals.

In a recent talk I’ve given titled, “Exercising Our Moral Leadership,” I’ve continued to press the theme of broad-based moral responsibility, arguing that each of us needs to lean on others for support in our ethical decision making, ranging from clarification of factual information to serving as moral sounding boards and accountability partners.

Ultimately, I believe ethics is a team sport – every stakeholder employing thoughtful analysis and engaging in constructive conversations. Still, the idea that ‘ethics is everyone’s job’ can seem like a platitude if people don’t genuinely embrace moral responsibility and seriously prepare themselves for ethical decision-making, which involves intentional actions like:

Adopting a moral anchor, or a set of moral standards, such as the Golden Rule or specific moral principles like decency, fairness, honesty, respect, and responsibility.
Thoroughly knowing one’s field because making ethical decisions also demands firm grasps of objective, factual information
Looking beyond immediate circumstances to consider long-term consequences and impacts on secondary stakeholders
Questioning the consensus because task definitions and time pressures sometimes lead teams to choose what can be done versus what should be done

Artificial intelligence appears to be as transformative a technology as our world has ever seen. Most of us have experienced firsthand how it can help us work more efficiently and effectively. We’ve also collectively witnessed how, if left unchecked, it can enable actions that are morally suspect.

We do need moral police for AI. You and I should be part of that patrol. Leading the force should be those who are most knowledgeable about AI – police chiefs at Alphabet, Microsoft, Nvidia, and . . . OpenAI.

It’s understandable that Altman wants to respect personal liberties and make Open AI profitable. However, allowing AI to police itself is asking for moral anarchy by way of Single-Minded Marketing.

Subscribe to Mindful Matters blog.
Learn more about the Mindful Matrix.
Check out the book, Mindful Marketing: Business Ethics that Stick

9 Comments

Can Competition Promote Moral Progress?

10/8/2025

2 Comments

by David Hagenbuch - professor of marketing at Messiah University -
author of Honorable Influence - founder of Mindful Marketing -
author of Mindful Marketing: Business Ethics that Stick

How is it possible to improve ethics in a field that seems beset by moral issues? What about actively engaging emerging marketers on topics that matter to them and using competition to provide positive, memorable experiences they can revisit when encountering moral issues in their future careers? That was the goal of the inaugural Mindful Marketing Ethics Challenge.

Competition is captivating. It’s a main reason sports are so popular to play and to watch. Only occasionally does academics include contests (e.g., spelling bees, quiz bowls). Competition involving ethics seems almost like a contradiction, but why not an ethics competition?

Since creating Mindful Marketing 11 years ago, I’ve envisioned different initiatives that might improve moral decision-making in the field. One of those recently came to be with the publishing of Mindful Marketing: Business Ethics that Stick. Another dream has been to see a student-based ethics competition.

For many years, I made the long drive to Western Pennsylvania with students in our capstone marketing course to participate in the American Marketing Association (AMA) Pittsburgh Chapter’s marketing plan competition. Although it was big commitment in many ways, it was a great learning opportunity and very helpful to see how our marketing program’s work compared to some of the best in the state. Moreover, it was exciting to compete.

With the creation of AMA Central PA three years ago, the dream of an ethics competition became more realistic; however, to make it happen, it took the support of a group of like-minded educators and marketing practitioners – fellow AMA Central PA leaders who saw the value in ethics for emerging marketers and who backed the proposal not just verbally but by championing the competition at their own universities and elsewhere. Thanks to that collective commitment to students and to moral progress, the Mindful Marketing Ethics Challenge was born.

Two months before students returned to campuses for the fall semester, I drafted a short ethics-focused case about one of the field’s biggest and most controversial promotional trends: influencer marketing. As August began, I began emailing faculty at other schools, inviting them to share with their students the case and the unique competition benefits described in a specially designed promotional flyer:

Team prizes: 1st place $500; 2nd place $300; 3rd place $200
Presentation opportunities
Food and networking

Ten teams submitted 1,500-word written responses to the influencer marketing case, which described a pitch that a hypothetical marketing firm, Impact, made to Widerquest, a fictitious maker of outdoor sporting equipment and apparel that sought to use influencers responsibly.

Although Impact’s proposal was good in many ways, it included moral concerns such as transparency about influencer compensation, respect for competitors, physical stereotypes, and product embellishment. A panel of six accomplished marketing practitioners evaluated the responses in a double-blind review process.

On October 1, eight teams from four different universities participated in the finale at Messiah University, where each team had five minutes to summarize its recommendations for ensuring that the influencer marketing in the case was both effective and ethical. The judges evaluated the presentations, and the combined written and oral scores were tallied to determine the top three place winners, whose school identities were then revealed:

Those were the logistics and timeline of the competition, which were important, but what did students learn about marketing ethics that they might carry into their future careers?

Teams’ written and oral responses to the influencer marketing case were very insightful. Some identified implications I hadn’t considered. The ethics case and the first-place team’s written response are available on the Mindful Marketing Ethics Challenge webpage. Here are several highlights of the winning team’s analysis:

“Impact’s expectations raise serious ethical concerns that conflict with Wilderquest’s values. By requiring embellishment of features and forbidding negative feedback, the proposal undermines honesty and risks deceiving consumers.”

“Encouraging influencers to disparage competitors manipulates buyer choice and fails to treat other brands fairly.”

“Respect is also compromised by messaging that portrays consumers’ lives as ‘lacking without Wilderquest,’ exploiting insecurities rather than affirming worth.”

“Responsibility is neglected by allowing influencers to promote products they have not used, stripping audiences of genuine evaluations and reviews.”

“Encouraging technology to enhance photos or videos without disclosure risks misleading consumers. Collectively, these practices jeopardize consumer trust and contradict Wilderquest’s commitment to authenticity.”

First-Place Team, Susquehanna University

In these thorough and thoughtful analyses of the case’s many moral issues, team members aptly identified several specific values that marketing firm Impact appeared to neglect, e.g., fairness, honesty, respect, and responsibility. Both the teams’ case analysis and oral presentation indicated a desire to embrace rather than avoid moral responsibility.

These analyses were affirming, but what was participants’ overall experience in the Ethics Challenge? Did they feel that the competition, aimed at increasing moral conscience, will benefit them in the future?

At the finale and afterward, those involved in the Challenge provided much positive feedback. One of the students, Moriah Goiran, a member of the second-place team from Shippensburg University, gave this assessment:

“Overall, it was a fantastic experience! Everyone was very welcoming, which made it a generally stress-free environment. I really enjoyed everything about it but what I most appreciated was the group discussion. It was really refreshing to have an intellectually diverse and driven conversation. I enjoyed hearing everyone's thoughts and opinions and interacting with people in the business field. This was my first time at a networking event so knowing how it works and how I operate in those situations will really help me in the future with what to discuss, etc.”

Similarly, Ruby Calabrese, a member of the first-place Susquehanna University team, shared her reflections:

“The project helped me develop keen insights into what I want to do with my career in marketing but also how important it is for companies to have ethical marketing practices . . . . The Mindful Marketing project, I feel, will help me in my future career goals when constructing my path and increase my knowledge of digital marketing advertising. Thank you for such a wonderful opportunity. I’m excited to see how the competition progresses.”

When you think about ethics, competition may be one of the last words that comes to mind. I’ve called ethics “a team sport,” meaning, to make significant moral impact, it often takes a group of people with shared commitments to do what’s right.

In the Mindful Marketing Ethics Challenge, teams competed against each other for place recognition, but they all competed against forces much greater and more perilous – moral apathy and acrimony.

That’s the competition we all need to realize were in and resolve to approach proactively, ideally with strong teams of like-minded moral champions.

The inaugural Mindful Marketing Ethics Challenge was a meaningful step in the right direction of encouraging new and experienced marketers to compete against indifference and engage their field’s moral challenges with the goal of Mindful Marketing.

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Cracks in the Branding Barrel

9/1/2025

by David Hagenbuch - professor of marketing at Messiah University -
author of Honorable Influence - founder of Mindful Marketing -
author of Mindful Marketing: Business Ethics that Stick

When you write about current ethical issues in marketing, there are sometimes trending topics you feel compelled to discuss. That’s the case with Cracker Barrel, which has stirred up two hot questions: 1) Is the company’s rebranding as unpalatable as some say, and 2) Has the “Old Country Store” cooked up something unethical?

To call the current conversation surrounding the half-century-old restaurant known for downhome southern atmosphere and comfort food a “controversy” is a bit of a misnomer. True controversies are pretty evenly split between proponents and detractors. Looking online and talking with people about Cracker Barrel’ rebranding, it’s hard to find many who like the restaurant chain’s new direction.

A basic Google search of “Cracker Barrel rebrand” produces these kinds of harsh responses:

“So Arrogant”
“The Worst Rebrand of All Time?
“How Cracker Barrel’s Rebrand Went So Wrong”

Even one of the restaurant’s co-founders, 93-year-old Tommy Lowe, has called the logo resign “pitiful.”

When I asked a couple of my classes for their thoughts, responses to the rebrand were also chilly. Most of the students are in Gen Z, not the stereotypical Cracker Barrel customer, and only a few had visited the restaurant recently, but many still voiced strong negative reactions. One student suggested the whole thing might be a PR stunt.

Although anything’s possible, I doubt the company would have 1) expected such backlash and 2) been willing to risk the long-term repercussions of things going sideways. That’s not a risk many companies would be willing to assume, particularly a restaurant as traditional as Cracker Barrel.

So, why did it decide to do such a bold rebranding? The company needed to reverse a downward slide and better position itself for the future.

On April 9, 2021, Cracker Barrel stock (CBRL on NASDAQ) traded at a high of $175.09. Since then, the stock has charted a rather consistent downward path.

About a year ago on September 6, 2024, its stock reached a low of $37.33, a decrease of $137.76, or 78.7% of the stock’s value from the April 2021 high.

The precipitous loss of equity would be concern enough, but demographics also suggest a challenging future for the restaurant chain that for many years has targeted Baby Boomers and older adults. As those customers keep aging, their restaurant visits decrease and will eventually dry up. Like any organization, Cracker Barrel must ensure there are new, younger consumers to replace the ones who age out of its products/services.

Although this generation-to-generation transition is a perennial challenge for restaurants and other businesses, significant industry changes have made life even harder for Cracker Barrel. Fast casual chains like Panera, Chipotle, and Cava are now the eateries of choice for many consumers, including Gen Ys and Zs, who often would rather not spend the time and money on a more traditional table-service meal.

In addition, food tastes have changed considerably over recent years. Comfort food for millennials is more likely to be a bowl with brown rice and falafel than a plate of mashed potatoes and meat loaf.

These trends have already severely impacted sit-down dining restaurants such as Applebee’s, Red Lobster, and TGI Fridays. Cracker Barrel likely has lasted longer because its older and more loyal customers helped insulate the company from the trends, but that insulation is now wearing very thin.

To its credit, Cracker Barrel’s rebranding has involved much more than just revising its logo, or graphic icon.

Earlier this year, the restaurant chain began updating the interiors of its dining rooms, which has included brighter colors and more comfortable seating. It also revamped its country stores to make the floorspace less cluttered and the merchandise more attractive. Finally, it added a variety of new menu items that both fit the old southern comfort food theme and appeal to more modern palettes, e.g., Nashville Hot and Honey Butter Fried Chicken.

Big market challenges usually demand bold solutions, which Cracker Barrel’s A-to-Z rebranding seems to represent. To be fair, it didn’t just slap a bandage (a more modern logo) on deeply seated problems. However, that general evaluation doesn’t mean the specific tactics it’s used are the right ones.

Since I’m Gen X, not one of the younger age cohorts that Cracker Barrel is most interested in for survival and future growth (Gen Y and Z), I spoke with a couple of people who are.

The first conversation was my son Daniel Hagenbuch, a doctoral student at Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, who has a great ear for sound and eye for design. Although he hadn’t visited a Cracker Barrel store since the renovations, he’s liked what he’s seen online of the new design elements. He said the fresher paint colors and new wall décor looked more tasteful and should appeal more to younger customers, who would appreciate a more modern look. He also thought one of the restaurant’s new seasonal items, OREO Stuffed Cheesecake Pancakes looked promising. He wasn’t, however, a fan of the new logo.

Neither was the second Gen Z member with whom I spoke, Daniel Smith, a thoughtful senior graphic design major and marketing minor at Messiah University. On one hand, he understood reasons for replacing the old logo, such as its fine detail posing challenges for scaling to small sizes like those required for pens and business cards. However, his design sense also went against the new logo:

“The rebranded logo uses a modern and minimalist approach, which is not at all related to Cracker Barrel’s ‘old country store’ aesthetic. The type is surrounded by a massive, blank margin space, making it feel like it lacks character. Also, the yellow space behind the type is supposed to be a barrel on its side but is barely recognizable, making the new logo worse than the iconic original.”

His evaluation aligns with my own analysis and likely with those of other professionals. Logos shouldn’t be pictures, partly because they need to be adaptable to a variety of surfaces and imprint sizes. The first article I ever wrote made that case: “Logos Should Work on Paper, Products,” which the American Marketing Association published in Marketing News in 2001.

Nostalgia is often a complicated thing to market. Sometimes what people want isn’t exactly the ‘way it used to be’, rather it’s a blend of the past and present. For instance, some new turntables for vinyl records have Universal Serial Bus (USB) outputs even though USB didn’t exist during the golden age of turntables. USB was first introduced in 1996. By that time CDs had replaced cassettes, which had replaced vinyl records a decade or more before.

A metaphor for people’s mixed appreciation for nostalgia might be American’s tastes for international food. Although many of us say we really like Mexican food or Chinese food, individuals from those nations sometimes point out that the food in their home countries is considerably different than the versions served in the U.S., which may be blander, have less heat, etc.

To survive, Cracker Barrel’s value proposition probably needs to become a fusion of past and present in order to satisfy the desires of younger generations whose lives are increasing far removed from the restaurant’s old country era. For that reason, refreshing the dining area, renovating the store, and revamping the menu are likely good things.

Revising its logo was also a good idea; however, the company’s execution fell short. The new logo was lacking in many ways. There likely could have been more input into its development and better communication ahead of its release.

Change can be hard for any of us to accept, including when it’s related to an iconic restaurant. However, it’s hard to argue that Cracker Barrel’s changes were unethical. For these reasons, the restaurant’s less-than-satisfying recipe for change tastes like Simple-Minded Marketing.

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Should Dolls Have Diseases?

8/1/2025

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by David Hagenbuch - professor of marketing at Messiah University -
author of Honorable Influence - founder of Mindful Marketing -
author of Mindful Marketing: Business Ethics that Stick

Perhaps no toy is more iconic than Mattel’s Barbie. From its humble beginnings 66 years ago at the American Toy Fair to a 2023 blockbuster movie, an ever-expanding variety of dolls and accessories have delighted millions of children, as well as some adults wanting to relive their childhoods. Throughout their existence, Barbie products have been consistently on brand – cheery and upbeat. So why would the renowned toymaker want to give its signature product a life-altering disease?

Over the years, Barbie has held well over 100 different jobs that have literally ranged from A to Z, e.g., astronaut (1965) to zoologist (2021). In between, Barbie also been an Olympic skier (1975), a rock star (1986), a business executive (1992), a film producer (2005), and a martial artist (2017), to name a few other occupations.

However, there’s a big difference between a profession that people choose and a disease that chooses them. Moreover, individuals often undertake years of schooling or other specialized training to prepare for their career, which then becomes a major source of self-esteem, as well as a primary personal identifier when introducing themselves to others. No one says, “Hi, I’m Chris, I’m incontinent.”

It's true that there are many people who rightly take pride in being cancer survivors or in recovering from other major health challenges, like heart attacks. However, I’ve also heard some say that they don’t want a disease to be what defines them. They want to be recognized and remembered for other things.

By marketing a Barbie with type 1 diabetes, is Mattel teaching kids to make the disease what defines them?

To the company’s credit, over many years it has gained considerable experience making dolls with unique physical attributes and related challenges. As might be expected, some of the toys have been better received than others.

Mattel first introduced a Barbie with a disability in 1997: Share-A-Smile Becky, who came with a pink wheelchair. However, the initial success that saw 6,000 dolls sold within the first two weeks was short-lived, as users found that Becky’s wheelchair was largely incompatible with the Barbie Dreamhouse.

In 2000, Mattel marketed a Barbie with vitiligo, a skin condition in which a lack of pigmentation gives a person an uneven, spotty complexion, and another doll with no hair, designed to represent any of the many reasons a child may experience hair loss.

In 2012, The company made Ella, a bald friend of Barbie, distributing a limited number of the dolls directly to hospitals. Two years later, the toymaker produced more Ellas in response to a petition from the mother of a cancer patient.

Mattel released Barbies with different body types in 2016, e.g., tall, curvy, and petite – a significant departure from the doll’s perpetually svelte physique. Unlike other Barbies with unique physical attributes, these dolls’ distinct traits weren’t directly related to diseases or disabilities. Instead, they indirectly supported positive mental health by diverging from society’s homogenized and often unrealistic standards of beauty.

In 2022, Mattel introduced an expanded line of dolls with disabilities, this time consulting experts to ensure even more accurate representation of the conditions. The collection included a Barbie with a prosthetic leg, another with a behind-the-ear-hearing aid, and a Ken doll with vitiligo. AmeriDisability, which seeks to represent America’s disability community, lauded the introduction as “groundbreaking.”

Similarly, in 2023, ahead of the release of its first Barbie with Down syndrome, Mattel worked with the National Down Syndrome Society to ensures the doll’s accurate representation of the genetic condition.

So, in many ways a Barbie with type 1 diabetes is just another iteration of differently enabled dolls for Mattel, but what do these dolls mean for our society? Is their net impact positive or negative?

Given that neither dolls nor diseases are in my wheelhouse, I reached out to several people who could answer these questions more authoritatively: Dr. Kevin Barnes – a retired pediatrician, Dr. Sarah Jones – a nurse educator, and Meredith Schorner – an RN and school nurse.

Barnes said he appreciates that Mattel spent more than a year working with a diabetes organization in order to ensure the doll’s accuracy, and he believes that for some of the more than 200,000 children in the U.S. with type 1 diabetes mellitus, it could be therapeutic to play with a doll that experiences the same things they do.

However, he also expresses some valid concerns, for instance:

Where do we draw the line on dolls representing childhood diseases, particularly ones that are somewhat “invisible” to others even though they greatly impact daily life, e.g., celiac disease, asthma?
Given Barbie’s history of more often emphasizing style over substance, how much of Mattel’s motivation in making the doll is the positive publicity it generates?

Jones believes that the type 1 diabetes Barbie can potentially do much good by helping to make the condition more mainstream, or acceptable, which among other things, could encourage proper self-management. That care is critical given that the disease demands intensive insulin therapy with either multiple daily injections or an insulin pump.

With confirmation from a colleague who regularly cares for diabetes patients, Jones states that Barbie’s self-monitoring insulin pump is the standard for treatment, which Jones sees as positive overall. However, like Barnes, she also raises some important questions about the doll:

Does its female Caucasian identity fall short in representing the disease’s well-documented impact across gender and racial lines?
Could Barbie’s continuous glucose monitoring device and insulin pump create stigma for children whose insurance will not cover the advanced technology and for families that cannot afford it so they must rely on traditional injections?
Could the doll make it more socially acceptable to have type 1 diabetes but not type 2? This may be an increasing concern given that incidences of type 2 diabetes, which is often associated with obesity, are on the rise among children.

Not surprising, Jone’s differentiation of the two sometimes conflated conditions coincides with that of the University of Virginia Health System, which states that “Unlike type 1, type 2 diabetes is not an autoimmune disorder,” rather it “occurs mostly in people over 45, or in younger people with obesity or genetic reasons.”

Besides her role as a school nurse, Schorner is a parent of young girls who believes the diabetic Barbie will be “an exciting new toy for many.” More than just a plaything for those who have type 1 diabetes, she expects the doll will raise questions for nondiabetic children and help them better understand the devices they see on some of their peers. She elaborates:

“Children need to know that their peers with type 1 diabetes (T1D) didn't do anything ‘wrong’ to become diabetic – they didn't eat too much sugar, and it certainly doesn't have anything to do with their weight. T1D is increasing in prevalence, and diabetic children need lots of support at home and at school. They need peers that can be not just understanding but also helpful to them in managing their diabetes.”

“Under the guidance of a knowledgeable adult, engaging in play with this doll may help young children develop a basic understanding of CGM readings, carbohydrate counting, and insulin requirements. It could also help children to know what to do if they encounter a person experiencing a diabetic emergency.”

Schorner has firsthand experience caring for children with type 1 diabetes. In one case, the child’s family chose finger sticks and insulin injections, at least in part because they were concerned that a more socially visible glucose monitor might label their child as a diabetic.

Another case involving a child who uses a glucose monitor and pump was different. Schorner recently had the privilege of telling this child about the new Barbie. When she did, the child’s face “lit up with excitement,” and they immediately asked to see a picture of the doll on Schorner’s phone. The child compared their technology to the doll's and although they weren’t the same, they appreciated seeing the doll with its accessories and seemed eager to add the Barbie to their nearly nonexistent collection of diabetes-related toys.

Notwithstanding this very positive response, Schorner added that not all states or insurance companies offer the same assistance to help cover the out-of-pocket cost of insulin pumps. Consequently, she can imagine how the Barbie could be discouraging to families of diabetic children that don’t have the means to purchase newer insulin-dispensing devices.

Over a decade of writing Mindful Marketing articles, I’ve often relied on experts to help me know the relevant facts and understand the nuances of complex ethical issues. The question of whether Mattel should market a Barbie with type 1 diabetes was certainly one for which I’ve needed such assistance.

The three experts on which I leaned for this piece have been extremely helpful to me in elucidating the case’s multifaceted, competing considerations. Despite the very real reservations that Barnes, Jones, and Schorner all offered, it seems that each believes there’s a place for a diabetic Barbie.

Their informed input certainly has shaped my opinion, but what may have been most impactful is the heartfelt reaction of a diabetic child who loves that a special Barbie will reflect their unique life experience.

No toy is perfect, but one that receives significant support from healthcare experts and that instantly delights a child with a life-altering disease most likely represents Mindful Marketing.

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Learn more about the Mindful Matrix.
Check out the book, Mindful Marketing: Business Ethics that Stick

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Should AI Help People Stay In Touch?

7/1/2025

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by David Hagenbuch - professor of marketing at Messiah University -
author of Honorable Influence - founder of Mindful Marketing -
author of Mindful Marketing: Business Ethics that Stick

When was the last time you spoke with your mom or dad? For adult children with their own families and demanding jobs, time between conversations with their aging parents can quickly become days or weeks. At a time when there seems to be a technological solution for every problem, it’s not surprising that there’s an app for that, but do we really want our moms and dads chatting with AI instead of with us?

InTouch is an internet-based subscription service that allows customers to enlist Mary, a pleasant and engaging AI agent, to have phone conversations with their aging parents. AI Touch s.r.o., a Czech Republic company that appears to own InTouch, offers several sample conversations on its website.

The site also provides some compelling rationale for the service, such as:

Stimulating the loved ones’ minds
Supporting their emotional well-being
Strengthening family connections

The company adds, “We go beyond small talk, discussing family, hobbies, memories, and even brain teasers to keep [the older parents’] mind active and spirits lifted.” The firm also promises to provide a short summary of each call so the subscriber can know how their parent is doing, or if they didn’t answer the phone.

Ultimately, inTouch aims to address a customer pain point that’s increasingly common for a particular generation of people who often must care for two sets of loved ones simultaneously: their own children and their aging parents. The caught-in-the-middle phenomenon has spawned the fitting term "the sandwich generation."

The age cohort that’s currently most likely to find itself in the middle is Generation X, whose members, born between 1965 and 1980, are 45 to 60 years old. Studies have shown that the pull of two-way caregiving places unique strain on Gen X’s time, as well as on their financial and mental health.

I am one of those Gen Xs who recently lived the sandwich experience. My father passed away less than four years ago, and my mother a little more than a year. Given a variety of physical challenges as well as worsening dementia, my mom required a particularly great amount of care in the years leading up to her passing.

At the same time, my wife and I were not yet empty nesters, and we both had demanding full-time jobs. Often it was difficult to balance the competing demands placed upon us.

Although that time was not long ago, AI agent-based services like InTouch didn’t exist then, or at least I didn’t know about them. If InTouch has been available to me, should I have used it to interact with my mother?

As just mentioned, I have firsthand experience similar to that of inTouch’s target market, which helps me envision the service’s pros and cons. However, I’m not an expert on older adults or the multifaceted social and psychological dynamics surrounding the aging process, so I reached out to someone who is.

Dr. Raeann Hamon is Distinguished Professor of Family Science and Gerontology at Messiah University. Her meaningful research, impactful writing, and influential leadership over several decades have gained her international renown. Moreover, she’s a thoughtful and compassionate person who wants the best for others.

I shared inTouch’s website with Dr. Hamon and asked if she would offer her perspective on the service. She graciously agreed.

Dr. Hamon acknowledged inTouch’s “great sales pitch” to time-strapped adult children who feel the challenge of caring for older family members, including engaging in what can be long, repetitive conversations. She pointed to the website’s promises to stimulate the mind, support emotional well-being, and reassure and connect you, which she said on the surface seem like positive applications of AI.

However, Dr. Hamon’s overriding reaction to InTouch was one of sadness and concern about AI replacing real human interaction with older family members. She explained her unease:

“The problem for me is that connections between aging adults and their adult children, grandchildren, friends, neighbors, and caregivers are irreplaceable. It’s not possible to duplicate them with machines, nor should we try. In my opinion, humans need to prioritize togetherness and share the depth of feelings possible in direct relationship with each other.”

At the same time, she was circumspect, recognizing that there are unique situations that might warrant special consideration:

“Perhaps there are older adults who are socially isolated and have no extended family. Maybe this would be useful for them. But even then, I would argue that such a situation offers an opportunity for neighbors to reach out to make connections. What would we say if busy parents employed a similar AI application for interacting with their children? Where does it end?”

Ultimately, she maintained that if there is a place for a service like inTouch, “it should be for the benefit of the older parent, not the adult child.”

Dr. Hamon’s reflections resonated with me. I’m sure I speak for my sisters when I say that as we cared for our aging parents, it was always with the goal of making their later years as comfortable and enjoyable as possible. From what our parents said and showed, a large part of that enjoyment came from being with and talking with us.

In the month before my father died, I had several opportunities to drive him around the areas that used to be his sales territory for the promotional products company he started, which became our family business. As his mind was still very sharp, we had many great conversations that included fond memories of the places and people we knew.

My mother’s situation was different. Because of worsening dementia, she experienced many years of progressive mental decline that eventually challenged her to recall even the most basic facts about herself and her family. Still, she maintained a very positive attitude through her final days and continued to cherish conversations with her loved ones.

My sisters and I also treasured those times and talks with our parents. We didn’t know then how long they would last, but we realized they were limited, which made them priceless then and now.

Dr. Hamon feels the same way. Beyond her professional roles, she’s a person who has experienced many of the familial dynamics she researches, writes about, and teaches. As a daughter she says, “I would never trade a minute with either of my parents.”

These experiences of mine, my siblings, and Dr. Hamon lead me to believe that even as inTouch offers an arguably helpful service to time-strapped adult children, it may be doing a disservice to them by taking away some of the most important and meaningful interactions of their lives: time-bound, person-specific experiences and that no technology can replicate or replace.

Each day, AI gets better at imitating human interactions. As it does, more people likely will allow daily discrete chatbot inquiries to “morph into companionship.” Such an evolution seems like a precarious path for humanity.

In many ways inTouch’s intentions are noble, but as Dr. Hamon suggests, the service seems like a step down the precarious path of technological relationships replacing human ones – a course that in this case is charted by Single-Minded Marketing.

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Learn more about the Mindful Matrix.
Check out the book, Mindful Marketing: Business Ethics that Stick

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Whether to Work in Multilevel Marketing

6/1/2025

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by David Hagenbuch - professor of marketing at Messiah University -
author of Honorable Influence - founder of Mindful Marketing -
author of Mindful Marketing: Business Ethics that Stick

Marketing ethics demands special care for vulnerable consumers – individuals who are at greater risk of being deceived or treated unfairly because they have less life experience, diminished senses, reduced cognitive skills, etc. While children, people with disabilities, and older adults are often considered vulnerable, one group that’s rarely included is college students; however, these young people are particularly susceptible to the practices of a specific category of employment: multi-level marketing.

I was glad to receive an email a few weeks ago from a student who had recently completed my business ethics course, “Morality in the Marketplace.” Rachel Sealover was an excellent participant who continually asked good questions, made insightful comments, and challenged my own thinking. However, my gladness turned to sadness as Rachel shared she had endured two very uncomfortable interviews with individuals attempting to recruit her for multilevel marketing (MLM). She then asked if I had ever written a Mindful Marketing article about MLM.

Having authored more than 320 ethics pieces during the last decade, I sometimes forget which issues I have/haven’t addressed. MLM seemed like one I had treated, but when a search of my master file produced no hits, I realized my recollection wasn’t from a Mindful Marketing article but from an email exchange I had with a fellow Messiah University professor more than ten years earlier.

In January of 2015, Professor of Philosophy Tim Schoettle contacted me after one of his former students asked to meet with him to talk about the multilevel marketer Primerica. Tim was troubled because he had seen several other MLM companies target recent college grads with unrealistic promises of clear paths to success and wealth. What’s more, just before his wife entered college, some of her mother’s Amway “upline,” higher-ups in the pyramid, told his wife that she would be more financially successful if she skipped college in favor of a career as an Amway “Independent Business Owner” (IBO).

Coincidentally, just a few days after I received Rachel’s email, I was seated at a table with Tim for an end-of-year “Ethics and the Common Good” retreat, as we each teach an ethics course in our university’s new general education curriculum. Without prompting or remembering our correspondence ten years earlier, Tim again brought up the topic of MLM. I was happy he did and told him that I planned to write a long overdue article on MLM and would invite his input. This, of course, is the article!

If you’re unfamiliar with the term, multilevel marketing refers to business models that sell directly to end consumers through independent distributors (i.e., non-employees). Moreover, the distributors are sometimes highly incentivized not just to sell products but to recruit others to do the same, as a portion of the earnings from their “downline” gets paid to those above them in the hierarchy.

Selling directly to end-consumers is not uncommon, for instance, thousands of automotive salespeople and real estate agents rightfully earn commissions on the cars and houses they sell to new buyers each day; however, those agents don’t typically try to recruit other agents in order to increase their earnings through passive income, which is a primary objective in much multilevel marketing.

Still, there’s not necessarily anything wrong with someone who loves what they do recruiting others to do the same work. What becomes problematic, though, is when new recruits are promised income streams that are unrealistic for anyone far down in the expansive triangular organizational structures. It’s in such situations that MLM can become a pyramid scheme.

In pyramid schemes, a small number of initial, top-level ‘investors’ earn above average returns on their investments, which are funded by the contributions of a larger number of newer second-tier investors. However, each subsequent level of the pyramid requires more investors to support the level above it, all while returns become increasingly difficult to deliver. Eventually, it becomes impossible for those in the lower levels of the pyramid to recoup their investments, and the pyramid collapses.

Some distinguish pyramid schemes from Ponzi schemes. Both share the triangular hierarchy. The main difference is that Ponzi schemes rely specifically on a continual flow of lower-level financial investors while pyramid schemes require the perpetual onboarding of new recruits who must pay significant entry fees to join the organization. In that sense MLM that prioritizes recruiting new representatives over the sale of products can rightly be called a pyramid scheme.

Such objective descriptions and definitions are useful; however, what’s even more meaningful is to hear from people who have experienced MLM firsthand. For that close-up perspective we turn to Rachel and Tim.

Given the multitude of moral issues that exist in business and marketing, we unfortunately didn’t discuss MLM in our ethics class; still, when Rachel interviewed for positions with MLM firms, her moral foundation informed her that things were not right.

A first red flag was the ease at which interviews were granted – She received an invitation to apply through the mail with minimal requirements: “No experience necessary, just apply using the QR code.”

Similarly, Tim has been alarmed by MLM firms’ aggressiveness in recruiting college students. In fact, he was so concerned by what he heard from former students, he decided to attend an Amway recruitment meeting so he could see the tactics himself. The meeting’s leader leveraged rhetoric in promising a path to wealth and independence, while avoiding any meaningful discussion of tangible business metrics like costs, customer demand, or return on investment. To Tim, the gathering felt more like “a motivational rally” than any kind of serious business seminar.

Rachel likewise observed a lack of financial transparency: “MLMs are usually not upfront with what employees are making for their first few paychecks, or how much you’ll make once you start.” Yet, when they do talk about results it’s “hyping up outcomes by highlighting the small percentage of people who do really well.”

For Tim, who maintains that “approximately 99% of participants in MLM lose money,” this practice of presenting the few best cases to prospective distributors is clearly deceptive.

In her interviews, Rachel also was unnerved by the firms’ “sketchy” emphasis on recruiting other distributors over selling their products:

“Selling the product to your target market is what every business does, but not every business is encouraging you to bring people in from your network or asking you to handover people's numbers.”

Tim’s many observations of MLM firms concur:

“The vast majority of profits in MLMs come not from selling products to customers, but from recruiting others and expanding one’s ‘downline.’ In practice, this model closely resembles a pyramid scheme.”

Rachel learned firsthand that MLM firms make much of their money from new recruits who they ask to pay “some sort of fee or startup cost” as a condition of employment. In that way, it doesn’t really matter how long new distributors last – the companies realize significant revenue just from what the recruits pay to sign-on.

Perhaps what troubled both Rachel and Tim most was seeing MLM firms make college students and recent grads their target market. As someone who knows this group better than most, Rachel acknowledged that many in the demographic are “vulnerable to get rich quick opportunities,” given their low economic means, their great desire to be hired, and their limited experience reasoning about vocational pros and cons.

Concerned about the lure of MLM on his students – past, present, and future – Tim laments, “The incentives to mislead are strong and baked into the system, making the bankruptcy of MLM difficult to detect, especially for those drawn in by the promise of personal success.” It’s not surprising, therefore, that he calls the business model “predatory.”

Are all MLM firms morally deficient? Probably not, but to synthesize Rachel’s and Tim’s reflections, ones that do one or more of the following five things offer reason for ethical pause:

Incentivize the recruitment of new distributors over selling products
Paint vague and/or unrealistic pictures of participant success
Use rhetoric to play on prospects’ emotions, e.g., fear, excitement, unrealistic optimism
Charge new enrollees significant nonrefundable startup fees
Require new distributors to share contact information of individuals in their networks

In keeping with the fifth point, even if someone is successful in MLM, a downside is the potential strain their work can place on relationships with family members and friends who feel continual pressure to support their loved one’s sales and/or recruitment goals.

Regrettably, there will always be new moral issues for Mindful Marketing to analyze. It’s also regrettable that it took me over ten years to tackle multilevel marketing. However, thanks to Rachel’s and Tim’s insights, this article should provide a helpful rubric for determining when MLM firms are only looking out for themselves and, therefore, are guilty of Single-Minded Marketing.

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Learn more about the Mindful Matrix.
Check out the book, Mindful Marketing: Business Ethics that Stick

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Apps that Imagine People Undressed

5/1/2025

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by David Hagenbuch - professor of marketing at Messiah University -
author of Honorable Influence - founder of Mindful Marketing -
author of Mindful Marketing: Business Ethics that Stick

Disgusting, deplorable, despicable? For more than a decade, I’ve written about ethical issues in marketing, at times exposing certain organizations’ shameful strategies that have disgraced the discipline and hurt people. However, in this instance I’m at a loss for an adjective that can aptly describe the collective disdain there should be for AI that digitally undresses people: nudify apps.

Among the worst practices in marketing I’ve discussed over the years, two that immediately come to mind are Ernst & Young (EY) encouraging its employees to cheat on ethics exams (Cultures of Corruption, July 16, 2022) and Volkswagen integrating a “defeat device” in certain cars in order to trick vehicle emissions readers (Dirty Diesel was No Accident, September 26, 2015). While EY’s behavior was deplorable because of its utter irony, VW’s actions involved painstakingly planned manipulation, the likes of which is seldom seen.

However, neither of these approaches is any more appalling than the newest encroachment on moral sensibility: nudify apps.

What are nudify apps? Kerry Gallagher, the education director for ConnectSafely, as well as a school administrator, a teacher, and a mom of two, succinctly describes them as apps that “take a regular clothed photo of a person and use artificial intelligence to create a fake nude image.”

Although using a nudify app to create such images should alone seem improper, what makes matters worse is that the apps’ users routinely share the fake photos with others, often teens as young as middle school, who then use the deepfake photos to harass and humiliate classmates.

The most infamous case of such shaming occurred in June 2024 in Australia where deep-faked nude images of about 50 girls in two private schools were widely distributed. The perpetrator was a male student, formerly of one of the schools.

As one can imagine, the victims of nudify apps, who are often the last to know what’s been done, are devasted. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) is “deeply concerned about the potential for generative artificial intelligence to be used in ways that sexually exploit and harm children.” More specifically, NCMEC issues a stern warning about the damage nudify apps do:

“These manipulative creations can cause tremendous harm to children, including harassment, future exploitation, fear, shame, and emotional distress. Even when exploitative images are entirely fabricated, the harm to children and their families is very real.”

It might seem that creating a fake nude image of someone would clearly be illegal, but as often happens with new technology, laws lag behind individuals’ and organizations’ actions. In the United States, a provision in the Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act of 2022 made the sharing of intimate images without consent grounds for civil action in federal court, but if the images shared are fakes, i.e., not real explicit images, has the civil law truly been broken?

Regardless of that potential legal loophole, using nudify apps legally doesn’t mean doing so is ethical.

The significant psychological and social harms the images cause their victims are certainly moral concerns. However, such negative outcomes aren’t the only ethical grounds on which nudify apps should be judged. The behavior also violates at least two time-tested values:

Fairness: Every person has rights to privacy, including for their body. Even though they are not actual photographs, the images that nudify apps create look “hyper-realistic” because the algorithms that create them have been trained on “large datasets of explicit images,” which produces for viewers the effect that they are actually seeing the victim naked. It’s unfair to have the right to physical modesty ‘stripped away’ without consent.
Decency: The human body is a beautiful thing, not inherently indecent. However, over millennia, most cultures have adopted rational norms that limit physical exposure in public by prescribing what people should wear, from loincloths to leggings. Many societies have codified their norms into laws aimed at guiding behavior, like statutes against public indecency and the Motion Picture Association’s film rating system (PG-13, R, etc.). The point is, abundant precedent suggests that the primary end of nudify apps, to indiscriminately publicize human nakedness, including among minors, is fundamentally indecent.

So far the focus of this article has been on the users of nudify apps, who are certainly culpable for their shameful acts. At the same time, when the perpetrators are themselves children, it’s especially important to ask: Who else should bear responsibility? Those accountable should include:

Parents: Although it’s impossible to monitor everything one’s kids do on their laptops and phones, parents must establish at least some safety limits. Moreover, parents should model and discuss appropriate behaviors more broadly so their children assimilate values that will positively guide their daily choices.
Institutions: Schools should be proactive in addressing nudify apps with their students, letting them know that the apps are off-limits and warning students of the consequences for violations.
Government: Legislatures at all levels should consider how then can limit if not eliminate nudify apps. Some states like New Jersey are making the use of nudify apps a criminal offense.
Associations: For the benefit of their fields, professional groups can take stands against nudify apps specifically, and more generally they should clearly the communicate the values of fairness and decency that are fundamental to rejecting the apps, as well as future technology based on similar impropriety.

There’s one other set of responsible parties not mentioned above because they deserve accountability above any other – the apps’ creators.

It’s hard to imagine how the dozens of marketers of nudify apps justify their products. Maybe some rationalize, “They’re for people to nudify themselves,” but who needs to do that? In most imaginable instances, the apps’ purpose is to undress others without their knowledge or consent, then to share the sordid deepfakes with others.

As often happens in cases where business strategy goes awry, money has likely overshadowed any plausible mission for the creators of nudify apps and woefully skewed the tech entrepreneurs’ ambitions. Likewise, the apps’ creators seemingly failed to self-censure, or follow the moral mandate, Just because we can doesn’t mean we should.

One entity that can’t reasonably be held responsible is AI. Artificial intelligence is basically a value-neutral tool, often used for good purposes but sometimes for nefarious ones, as nudify apps illustrate. AI largely does what it’s told to do without questioning the ethicality of the instructions, which is the obligation of people.

As I’ve found through my own experiences using AI and as the following articles expound, it’s up to humans to hit pause when potential ethical issues arise and to ask the moral question, “Is this something we should be doing?”

Abominable, egregious, heinous, indefensible, reprehensible – maybe all these adjectives are needed to adequately describe the destructive nature of nudify apps. One other descriptor that should be included is Single-Minded Marketing.

Subscribe to Mindful Matters blog.
Learn more about the Mindful Matrix.
Check out the book, Mindful Marketing: Business Ethics that Stick

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Apps that Imagine People Undressed

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