ASQ’s “Quincy” Likely Violates the EU AI Act

ASQ is jumping onto the latest “let’s put internet into refrigerators” industry trend with its AI assistant, “Quincy.” The bot is essentially an AI-powered search engine that will help ASQ members get access to information taken from — we are told — ASQ’s “proprietary content.” Says ASQ:

Quincy is ASQ’s AI-powered large language model (LLM) assistant. Trained exclusively on ASQ’s proprietary content, Quincy helps ASQ members access instant answers and tailored solutions to their quality challenges. Think of Quincy as a 24/7 knowledge concierge, offering personalized responses and guidance developed from decades of ASQ resources.

Because this is ASQ we’re talking about — the same organization that embraces white supremacists and plays fast and loose with members’ money — of course you know they not only screwed this up, they likely broke a law or two while doing it.

You see, ASQ is led by greed now. It’s not clear ASQ was ever a true membership organization, as it always smelled of an Amway-style multilevel marketing scam. In ASQ, they sell products to members and then recruit those members to sell their products to other members. Members who play along, behave, and maintain a decade or more of paid subscriptions and active buying history are then rewarded with fancy titles like “Fellow” or even a Board seat.

Over the past decade or so, ASQ has shifted into full scammer mode, with allegations that it has misused member funds to benefit its executives, and a potentially illegal split into two organizations, where the new org was gifted a substantial amount of member funds and intellectual property.

Quincy is no different. Rather than offer the tool to the quality management profession at large, you can only access it if you pay for an ASQ subscription. So it’s essentially paywalled. As usual, ASQ is not interested in advancing the profession, only the payroll of its executives.

This creates problems. Because there is money involved, Quincy is thus ostensibly a commercial product. Next, ASQ boasts offices and branches in over 20 countries in Europe. That brings Quincy under the regulations defined by the European Union’s new AI Act.

You see, the AI Act is not limited to companies that sell AI products in Europe; it affects any company wanting to sell an AI-powered product in Europe, no matter where that company is from. AI Act is a product certification scheme, like CE Mark. If you don’t comply with AI Act, or can’t prove your compliance through a variety of mandatory steps and documentation requirements, you can’t sell in Europe. If you sell it anyway — which ASQ appears to be doing — you can face punishing, bankrupting fines.

And ASQ doesn’t have that kind of cash, since their execs keep raiding the coffers.

Some of the AI Act requirements are full disclosure on what content the AI model was trained on. Here, ASQ only says that it was trained on its “proprietary content.” That’s misleading and may be at least partially untrue. First, ASQ takes all member content and keeps it as its own, so if you post something on their forum, that suddenly becomes ASQ’s “proprietary content,” even though ASQ didn’t create it. That’s already a scummy, scammy practice typical of website operators, but it gets much worse when that information is then used to train a large language model (LLM) that users never agreed to. You see, people posting on their website just a few years ago never knew LLMs existed, and such usage was never part of the terms of service; so ASQ never really obtained permission to use anyone’s content for LLMs, but did so anyway. That might not fly under the AI Act.

Next, ASQ doesn’t really have sole ownership or control of the Quiuncy bot nor the data anyway. It was actually built by a third-party company, Bettybot, using their commercial “Bettybot” AI product. So the data is likely housed by Betty and not ASQ. At least some language in the Quincy terms of use language published by ASQ supports this idea:

The Quincy AI assistant is powered by Bettybot LLC, who may collect certain usage data and IP addresses of those members interacting with the Quincy AI assistant. By using the Quincy AI assistant, you agree not to include any sensitive personal information or confidential information into the Quincy AI assistant and acknowledge that any information entered into the Quincy AI assistant, such as in the form of a query, will be processed by Bettybot LLC.

ASQ then points users to its privacy policy, but it’s likely the privacy policy and terms of use of Bettybot that should take precedence here. And here is what Bettybot says (emphasis added by me):

 Betty Users acknowledge that they obtain no ownership rights in the application, or any of its related Services, Software, or Work Product All rights to the application Services, Software, and/or Work Product, including but not limited to any accompanying technical documentation, Confidential Information, trade secrets, trademarks, service marks, patents, copyrights, and other proprietary information, are, shall be, and will remain the sole property of BettyBot LLC or any third party from whom BettyBot LLC has licensed such software or technology.

We have two competing Terms of Use here. ASQ claims the content is their proprietary information and, by extension, anything you feed into Quincy would become their property as well. However, Bettybot is claiming sole ownership at the same time. Both of these things cannot be true.

This violates the AI Act. Users have to know how their data will be used, who owns it, and thus who controls it. There are rules for privacy and responsible use of the data. That includes the data used to build the LLM and the data then gathered during use of the AI product itself.

ASQ also only tells its users that Bettybot will gather “certain usage data and IP addresses,” when in fact, they will probably consume anything that is entered into Quincy. At best, the ASQ Terms of Use are misleading or in error, but knowing ASQ, they are probably being intentionally fraudulent.

As I can tell, ASQ has not provided any way for European members to opt out of Quincy, nor does it serve up any warnings to those in Europe that the product does not comply with the AI Act.

It looks as if the greedy, mind-numbingly dumb donkeys in the ASQ executive suite once again saw a thing that everyone else has and tried to latch onto it far too late, without nearly any actual thought or preparation. Bettyboy was more than willing to sell it to them, too.

As usual, too, the victims will be ASQ’s members. But since ASQ has taken on near cultlike qualities, most of them will happily go along with it, let their intellectual property be used in ways they never agreed to, and never raise a peep to their scheming overlords.

On that note, how many of you use the internet that people built into your refrigerators and washing machines? Yes, Quincy will end up as useful as that, but with many more shady aspects.