Product designers must ensure that their products are safe for consumers, requiring that product risks are identified, assessed, and mitigated. However, identifying potential product failure modes and their accompanying mitigations can be difficult, involving the identification of the product will be used and potentially misused. With the rising popularity of generative AI tools, the role of AI was investigated within the product safety risk characterization process. For six commonly recalled product types, a selection of large language models were prompted to perform the following risk management tasks:
The quality of the results was then assessed by product safety experts. As risk analysis practitioners, we must understand the potential, as well as the limitations, of these tools, and the impacts that AI might have on the future of our profession.