GoKawiilAre people oversharing sensitive information with AI? Short answer: yes.
A new survey called The AI Privacy Problem by DuckDuckGo Research said about a third of people are sharing secrets with chatbots that they don’t share with friends, family and medical professionals. The number rises to 56% among self-described AI enthusiasts. Researchers also found that 43% of parents reveal things to AI that they don’t tell the most trusted people in their lives, including their kids.
Though the survey didn’t specify what kind of personal information is shared with AI, past reports have shown that we often turn to chatbots for help with physical and mental health issues, financial advice, parenting questions and marital problems.
The problem isn’t about seeking help. The problem is losing control over what happens with the data after it’s shared in chats. Companies can use your private info to train their AI systems. Law enforcement can get it through subpoenas. And if you’re using AI chatbots at work, your employer can likely access your chat history, too.
AI companies try to convince people that chatbots are trusted confidantes, but that’s a false narrative, the DuckDuckGo report said.
“These messages all rest on one assumption: That these chats are private. In most cases, that just isn’t true,” researchers said.
In fact, the survey found that many respondents didn’t realize how their chatbot data could be used or accessed or that they didn’t know about settings to prevent their information from being recorded or stored. When it comes to protecting their data, nearly 40% of respondents had no trust in companies and nearly 50% had no trust in the US government.
Privacy risks of large language models
Many of us know that companies bombard us with targeted, personalized online ads. If you run a Google search for vacuums, you’ll see vacuum ads pop up on your screen. If you search for Mediterranean cruises, you’ll surely get cruise ads on YouTube (owned by Google). Companies also buy, sell and share our social media data to help guide their advertising.
But AI data-sharing goes well beyond being the focus of selling you products. If you provide sensitive information to a chatbot, it could be revealed or exposed. A researcher at Wake Forest University found that AI agents, which use LLM data to perform autonomous tasks, can sometimes leak data, either maliciously or unintentionally.
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