Selling Privacy: Ethical and Legal Implications of Personal Data Use in AI Marketing

This research paper seeks to highlight some of the ethical issues, legal hurdles, and gaps in research that remain when personal data is commercialized in AI-powered digital marketing.

The PRISMA 2020 methodology was applied to search and select 15 peer reviewed journal articles from the Scopus database, published within the time frame 2021 - 2026. Thematic synthesis produced four themes: (1) a persistent privacy paradox where consumers express concern about data use yet continue sharing it because platform architectures make the cost of disclosure feel abstract, (2) a fragmented regulatory landscape where overlapping frameworks create compliance confusion rather than consumer protection, (3) emerging evidence that ethical compliance positively predicts marketing campaign success, and (4) bibliometric evidence that the field remains tilted toward technical optimization at the expense of governance and ethics research.