Commercial Litigation Update

The discussion of Artificial Intelligence (“AI”) in the workplace typically focuses on whether the AI tool and model has a discriminatory impact. This means examining whether the AI output creates an unlawful disparate impact against individuals belonging to a protected category.

However, that discussion rarely centers on the types of training data used, and whether the training data itself could have a harmful effect on the workers tasked with training the AI model.

On January 7, 2025, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (“CFPB”) published a final Rule (the “Rule”) that prohibits consumer reporting agencies from including individuals’ medical debt on consumer credit reports. The CFPB states that this Rule, which amends Regulation V of the Fair Credit Reporting Act, aims to ease financial burdens placed on individual consumers seeking loans by preventing medical debt from negatively impacting credit scores. Additionally, the Rule prohibits creditors from considering consumer medical debt information in credit eligibility determinations and decisions.

The Rule has been published in the Federal Register and is scheduled to become effective March 17, 2024. A recent Executive Order, however, may delay or impact whether the Rule is implemented and, if it is implemented, the timing of when the Rule becomes effective.