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Privacy

Privacy is an on-going concern with AI use, as there are often uncertainties about if/how AI tools and systems are harvesting, retaining, and utilizing personal data from their users. Some policies may provide information about what is done with user input, but the tool could track and collect user information & activity without your knowledge in other ways. Once collected, it's even less clear what is done with this data. Some tools store data online indefinitely, often leaving it up in the air for future use while also rendering it vulnerable to security breaches. AI assistants and chatbots may send conversations along to reviewers and/or use for further training of the tool, which means any personal information could be seen by humans or perpetuated in other user interactions.

It is becoming more common for AI tools to request broad access to features on your device(s) in order to function, including calendars, photos, contacts, email, and more. Even if this data is stored locally on your phone or laptop, granting a tool access allows it to essentially capture a snapshot of your most personal information. In this way, you may never be able to know what data it has gathered from you, nor what it might do with it.

Also, you don't even necessarily need to use an AI tool for your privacy to be at risk. AI systems use data scraping to extract massive amounts of data from the internet in order to train their models. So, if you have any kind of information online, you simply may never know if it has been collected and utilized by an AI model.

Best Practices

Consider if the task you want achieved is worth potentially giving up access to your most personal information
Thoroughly review the privacy or data use policy of any AI tool you're considering utilizing
Avoid putting any personal information (yours or anyone else's) into a chatbot or other AI tool
Do not upload any proprietary information or work (yours or anyone else's) into an AI tool, especially without permission