AASS Seminar: "Artificial Intelligence for Consumer Empowerment: the CLAUDETTE System"

Who: Marco Lippi, Accociate Professor, University of Florence 
What: Seminar "Artificial Intelligence for Consumer Empowerment: the CLAUDETTE System". 
When: October 1, 2026, 10:00
Where: Hörsal L3
Remote attendance: https://oru-se.zoom.us/j/65096623293

Abstract
As consumers, we are continuously exposed to digital risks, often becoming resigned to businesses monitoring our activities, examining our data, and manipulating our choices. Artificial Intelligence is often depicted as a weapon in the hands of businesses and blamed for allowing this to happen. We envision a paradigm shift, where AI technologies are brought to the side of consumers and their organizations, with the aim of building an efficient and effective counterpower. The main focus of this talk is the automatic analysis of terms of service of online platforms -- contracts that too often contain clauses that are potentially unfair to the consumer. We present the results achieved by the CLAUDETTE project over the last decade, describing a series of experimental studies where machine learning has been employed to automatically detect such potentially unfair clauses across multiple languages, and with the additional aim to provide explanations of the legal rationales behind the concept of unfairness. Our results demonstrate that this technology could serve as a valuable tool for both lawyers and citizens, leading to a better oversight of business activities, help consumers exercise their rights, and enable the civil society to mitigate information overload.

Bio
Marco Lippi received the BSc and MSc Degrees (cum laude) in Computer Engineering from the University of Florence in 2004 and 2006, respectively. In 2010 he obtained the PhD in Computer and Automation Engineering from the same university. Then, he was Research Assistant at the Universities of Florence (2010-2011), Siena (2011-2014), and Bologna (2014-2016). From March to June 2014 he was visiting scholar at Université Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris. Since November 2016, he has been tenure-track Assistant Professor and then Associate Professor in Computer Engineering at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia. Since March 2024 he joined again the University of Florence as Associate Professor. His research focuses on machine learning and artificial intelligence, with applications to natural language processing, argumentation mining, legal informatics, bioinformatics, medicine, and time-series analysis. In 2012 he was awarded the "E. Caianiello" prize for the best Italian PhD thesis in the field of neural networks.