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‘AI Girlfriends’ Are a Privacy Nightmare
Romantic chatbots collect huge amounts of data, provide vague information about how they use it, use weak password protections, and aren’t transparent, new research from Mozilla says.
Collectively, the apps, which have been downloaded more than 100 million times on Android devices, gather huge amounts of people’s data; use trackers that send information to Google, Facebook, and companies in Russia and China; allow users to use weak passwords; and lack transparency about their ownership and the AI models that power them. Since OpenAI unleashed ChatGPT on the world in November 2022, developers have raced to deploy large language models and create chatbots that people can interact with and pay to subscribe to. Mozilla’s researchers looked at a variety of chatbots including large and small apps, some of which purport to be “girlfriends.” Others offer people support through friendship or intimacy, or allow role-playing and other fantasies.
Or read this on Wired