How Meta AI Revealed Users' Secrets Without Their Knowledge

  It kind of feels like the start of a horror flick set in our modern world: turns out your browsing history has been out there for everyone to see the whole time and you had no clue. That's pretty much what's going on with the new Meta AI app, where tons of users are unknowingly sharing what they think are private chats with the AI.

It kind of feels like the start of a horror flick set in our modern world: turns out your browsing history has been out there for everyone to see the whole time and you had no clue. That's pretty much what's going on with the new Meta AI app, where tons of users are unknowingly sharing what they think are private chats with the AI.

When folks ask the AI a question, they can hit a share button that shows a preview of their post before it goes live. But it seems like many users are sharing their text chats, audio messages, and pics without realizing it.

Just this morning, I was shocked to hear an audio clip of a dude with a Southern accent asking, “Hey, Meta, why do some farts stink more than others?”

But worrying about farts is just the tip of the iceberg for Meta. Users on the Meta AI app have been asking things like how to dodge taxes, if their family might get arrested for being close to white-collar crimes, or how to write a character reference letter for a friend in legal trouble—some even included their full names. Security whiz Rachel Tobac found cases where people’s home addresses and sensitive court stuff were out there, plus a bunch of other private info.

Whether it’s about dodging the law or weird health stuff, this brings up some huge privacy issues. Meta doesn’t really alert users about their privacy settings or where their content might end up. So if you log into the Meta AI app with your Instagram and your account is set to public, then things like asking how to meet “big booty women” become public, too.

A lot of this could’ve been avoided if Meta hadn’t rolled out an app based on the assumption that people would want to see each other’s chats with Meta AI, or if anyone there had seen the red flags with this kind of feature. Google hasn’t tried to turn its search engine into a social media platform for good reasons, and remember AOL’s attempt back in 2006 to share anonymized user searches? Yeah, it didn’t end well—it was a ticking bomb.

As for the numbers, according to Appfigures, a company that tracks app trends, the Meta AI app has racked up only 6.5 million downloads since it dropped on April 29.

That might sound cool for an indie app, but we’re not talking about some rookie developer making a small game. This is coming from one of the richest companies out there that has poured billions into this tech.