Artificial Intelligence and Marketing. Ethical Dilemmas in the Bulgarian Professional Environment

Artificial intelligence (AI) is revolutionizing marketing by ​​analyzing large volumes of data, deriving trends and patterns in consumer behavior and the business environment, automating routine tasks, etc. The entry of AI into marketing seriously raises the question of its ethical and responsible application. Examination of global studies and scholarly texts has shown that the dilemmas relate to four main themes – ensuring transparency, respecting confidentiality, avoiding bias and manipulation, maintaining a balance between automation and human participation. Based on the familiarity with a number of global are formulated questions about the degree of preparedness of Bulgarian marketing professionals for the introduction of AI. An online survey was conducted on the Microsoft Forms platform. The results show that professionals are aware of the need for regulation and insist that there should be a clear definition of responsibility in a legal, professional and internal company framework for integrating ethical practices into marketing strategies. They declare a need for more training for an industry that is generally ill-equipped to deal with ethical challenges. Coinciding with the global ethical issues are the topics of privacy breaches, manipulative practices, lack of transparency and accountability, and poor data security and protection. They do not face the issue of discrimination and inequality as a possible effect of working with AI and here we can see the Bulgarian context. For them AI is a tool mainly for automation of processes and tasks in the team, data analysis, more engaging interaction with users, cost optimization and ROI, precise audience targeting, forecasts.