AI Girlfriend: Key Principles of Cyber Hygiene
Casual interactions with AI partners can lead to dire consequences, caution cybersecurity experts.
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Today, everyone can create a chatbot friend or partner with preferred looks, personality, hobbies, etc. Such a virtual buddy will always listen, offer support, and be in touch 24/7.
Many apps invite users to engage in a romantic interactive game to find friendship or even love. However, before immersing yourself in virtual passions, it's important to ask: how is the confidentiality of the information you share with your AI partner ensured, if at all?
And there might be concerning news. The Mozilla Foundation, committed to ensuring “the internet remains a force for good,” evaluated several romantic AI apps, including popular ones like Replika, Romantic AI, Chai, EVA AI Chat Bot & Soulmate, and others. The outcome – nearly all received a Privacy Not Included warning label. Thus, Mozilla experts advise users to carefully consider before purchasing or downloading such apps.
They indicate that AI lovers pose a threat to data security in “disturbing new ways.” For instance, CrushOn.AI collects data about gender-affirming services provided to the user (according to the WHO, such assistance supports and affirms a person's gender identity when it contradicts their birth-assigned sex). Moreover, AI partners are keen on users' sexual health and medication lists.
Once you've confided in your virtual lover, retracting that information is likely impossible: more than half of the analyzed apps do not allow users to delete personal data collected by chatbots. And nine out of ten apps are likely to sell or share such information for targeting.
Additionally, the number of trackers (code snippets gathering information on users' location, digital behavior, etc.) found by Mozilla in these romantic AI apps is astonishingly high. For instance, Romantic AI has over 24,000 trackers per minute (!).
We found no transparency into how their AI works to get to know you and communicate with you, no way that you as the user might be able to control that AI if it were to say, become abusive or harmful, and we also couldn't find any information about how your chats are used to train their AI and if you can opt out of this,
states the Mozilla Foundation.
Therefore, experts draw a bleak conclusion: romantic AI chatbots are not primarily designed to prevent loneliness. Their main goal is to encourage users to disclose as much confidential information as possible.
Nevertheless, Mozilla didn't just highlight these concerns; they also provided a set of guidelines to help you keep your AI lovers in check. Here are a few:
- When signing up for a romantic app, opt out of data tracking if the option exists.
- Unless absolutely necessary, don't grant the app access to your device's camera, microphone, photos and videos, or geolocation.
- Avoid connecting to third parties through the app, logging in via external accounts, or using social network plugins.
- Limit ad tracking and disable ad personalization.
- After you've finished with the virtual love game, close your account and delete all personal data from the app.
And, most importantly: do not share any personal or sensitive information with AI partners! As the old proverb goes, The best secret is the one you keep to yourself.
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