<h1>Legal risks for AI-powered local discovery platforms: consumer protection, misleading ads, data privacy, liability, competition, and compliance</h1> The press release highlights potential legal issues for emergent conversational, AI-enabled local discovery platforms: consumer protection risks from inaccurate or 'hallucinated' AI outputs; advertising and misleading claims regarding availability or pricing; platform liability for transactional failures or harm; data protection and consent obligations when handling small businesses' and consumers' personal information; competition and fair-trading concerns as new entrants displace traditional directories; and compliance with sectoral regulations for commerce, payments and messaging services. Regulators and platforms will need clear policies, transparent AI safeguards, verifiable listings, dispute-resolution mechanisms and robust data governance to mitigate legal risk.