AI girlfriends want to know all about you. So might ChatGPT (Lock and Code S05E17)

This week on the Lock and Code podcast…

Somewhere out there is a romantic AI chatbot that wants to know everything about you. But in a revealing overlap, other AI tools—which are developed and popularized by far larger companies in technology—could crave the very same thing.

For AI tools of any type, our data is key.

In the nearly two years since OpenAI unveiled ChatGPT to the public, the biggest names in technology have raced to compete. Meta announced Llama. Google revealed Gemini. And Microsoft debuted Copilot.

All these AI features function in similar ways: After having been trained on mountains of text, videos, images, and more, these tools answer users’ questions in immediate and contextually relevant ways. Perhaps that means taking a popular recipe and making it vegetarian friendly. Or maybe that involves developing a workout routine for someone who is recovering from a new knee injury.

Whatever the ask, the more data that an AI tool has already digested, the better it can deliver answers.

Interestingly, romantic AI chatbots operate in almost the same way, as the more information that a user gives about themselves, the more intimate and personal the AI chatbot’s responses can appear.

But where any part of our online world demands more data, questions around privacy arise.

Today, on the Lock and Code podcast with host David Ruiz, we speak with Zoë MacDonald, content creator for Privacy Not Included at Mozilla about romantic AI tools and how users can protect their privacy from ChatGPT and other AI chatbots.

When in doubt, MacDonald said, stick to a simple rule:

“I would suggest that people don’t share their personal information with an AI chatbot.”

Tune in today to listen to the full conversation.

Show notes and credits:

Intro Music: “Spellbound” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Outro Music: “Good God” by Wowa (unminus.com)

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