[Insight & Opinion] The "Right to Be Forgotten" in the Age of Artificial Intelligence (AI)

If the "Right to Request Deletion" Lacks Clear Regulation,
AI Search Engines Could Be Abused Without Limit
Urgent Action Needed to Protect Fundamental Human Rights

Everyone has a past they wish to forget. This is not something that applies only to certain individuals whose political careers were derailed by reckless words and actions during immature times. Humans are creatures of change and improvement. Sometimes, it is best to bury the past as the past. However, now, beyond the internet era, we have entered the age of artificial intelligence (AI), where our erased memories can be summoned at any time and become the present rather than the past. While internet-era searches had limitations based on individual search abilities, AI-driven searches seem to have no such limits.

In this age of exposure, interest is rising in the somewhat unfamiliar concept of the "right to be forgotten." The right to be forgotten is the authority for individuals to request the deletion of personal information stored by institutions and service providers. This is called the "right to request deletion," and it was established in the European Union (EU) in 2014 and codified under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

In particular, this law applies to search engine results pages like Google’s, allowing the "data subject," the individual, to request the deletion of specific links or information about themselves to the extent possible. In fact, the potential for abuse by search engines is limitless. For example, digitizing all court rulings made public as documents and posting them on a specific site, then charging individuals a fee to delete their information, can lead to all sorts of unethical business practices on the borderline between legal and illegal. Whether good or bad, the desire for profit in the market is endless. When combined with AI, all imaginable harms can become reality.

Outside the EU, including in Korea, the situation is not easy. Even if one can request deletion of certain personal information from search results within the EU, access to those search results remains possible outside the EU region. In Korea, the "right to be forgotten" has not yet been legislated, but it is a concept that can be sufficiently utilized in legal lawsuits if harm occurs. However, without specific regulations clearly stating the provisions for cases where this right is applied through the "right to request deletion," as in the EU’s GDPR, exercising this right is difficult and can incur enormous litigation costs. Especially if organizations or service providers intentionally delay responses to deletion requests, the actual harm remains. In contrast, the GDPR stipulates a one-month response period for institutions to reply to deletion requests.

Even for personal information, there are many important cases where maintaining and disclosing information is necessary, such as when disclosure is required to comply with legal obligations, serves the public interest, or is appropriate for public interest retention for academic or research purposes. The right to know and access information versus the right to prohibit data collection and request deletion can become a fierce conflict between parties.

Especially without clear regulations on rights, not only direct and indirect harm to individuals but also legal disputes and economic costs such as litigation accompany these conflicts. In this situation, the long-standing wisdom of an economic theory is being revisited: the "Coase Theorem" by law and economics scholar Ronald Coase, who won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1991. This theorem posits that simply clearly defining rights can allow many economic conflicts of interest to be resolved by the market itself, and we see this applied in many real-world cases.

As we enter the AI era connecting the past, present, and future, there is much anticipation, but urgent reflection is needed on fundamental human rights such as personal information protection, including the "right to be forgotten."

Kim Gyu-il, Professor at Michigan State University, USA