Meta says your chats with Meta AI are not private, could be seen by everyone

India Today

5 hours ago

Meta AI app revealing your personal data? In the past few weeks, Meta's new stand-alone AI chatbot app has been subject to criticism for how it handles user conversations. Many people have shared examples of seeing posts in the Discover feed that appear highly personal and even include sensitive information. While Meta has clarified that chats with the AI chatbot are private by default and only become public when users explicitly share them, many users remain confused—or even unaware—that their questions to the bot or even personal photos can end up on the public feed.advertisementThe confusion around sharing personal chats with Meta AI likely stems from the app's interface. The chatbot includes a share button. Upon clicking the app opens a preview screen which asks users to confirm the action for the chat to appear in the public Discover feed. However, the sharing process does not clearly reveal details on what gets shared, where, and with whom. And this process has certainly led some users to mistakenly publish content they assumed was private.The result is that the Discover feed is now populated with a stream of awkward, revealing, and sometimes alarming conversations making their way into the public eye. For instance, when we checked the Discover feed, there were posts like people asking about IRCTC guidelines for spouses, personal beauty regimes, or even letters that included sensitive details. One widely circulated example features an audio recording of a man asking, 'Hey, Meta, why do some farts stink more than other farts?'—all of which are likely shared directly or unintentionally.advertisement
Although Meta spokesperson Daniel Roberts responded to the controversy by clarifying that chats with Meta AI remain private unless users choose to share them, he added, "Users have to actively tap the share or publish buttons before it shows up on the app's Discover feed." Even after tapping the share button, there is only a small note stating, 'Prompts you post are public and visible to everyone,' which doesn't explicitly say where posts will appear or what level of visibility the post will have —leading to potential misunderstandings.We have used the app, and right now it's clear that posts are only made public if shared manually. But the process isn't entirely transparent. While it doesn't automatically expose private chats, the share feature is vague enough to leave some users unsure about what they're consenting to—especially for those who log in via public Instagram profiles. There is an option for users to create a completely new profile.And while many of the shared posts appear to be trolling or memes—including an AI-generated image of a monkey taking selfies in the Himalayas—others are deeply personal, including photos which users are sharing with AI to change into different themes like comics or art. And this is raising concerns about how the app is turning into a privacy minefield.