How to Keep Your Secrets Safe From AI Chatbots

AI chatbots remember your secrets. As Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announces plans to provide a personal super-intelligence assistant to all users, concerns are growing over how the personal information shared with these bots will be used.

When you exchange stories with chatbots—whether about health or financial issues that you might be reluctant to share with others—conversations accumulate, allowing the AI to build a detailed profile of the user. Recently, AI companies have been rapidly expanding features that allow assistants to remember what users say. Some services even utilize information beyond a single conversation, tapping into broader activity data.

Depending on the service and settings, the collected information is used to personalize future responses or influence recommendations and ads. As AI services gain access to more connectable information about users, personalization becomes more sophisticated, but the digital portrait—encompassing interests, daily life, and even worries—becomes increasingly detailed.

Experts emphasized that carefully curating what to share is now more important than ever.