Late-breaking reports suggest Apple has built a new Siri AI ‘Recaps’ feature that summarizes your day for you. The idea sounds great until you recognize that this summary will also include overheard conversations.
Suspending the huge red flag of concern over privacy and data protection for a moment or two, why would this be useful and who is it for?
How it’s supposed to work
First, it is being described as an Apple Watch feature that will only be available on the latest models: Apple Watch Series 12 and Apple Watch Ultra 4, as these allegedly include secure audio processing hardware. Reading between the lines, that suggests the devices will be able to listen to and process audio on device, which implies that the information won’t need to leave your smartwatch, not even to your iPhone.
The report also says the feature doesn’t make a transcript, nor does it store the audio; it instead gathers key datapoints from what is said to include in the summary, deleting all the remaining information in the process. You can have the feature working all day, on-demand, or only in specific locations. The idea seems to be to provide some kind of actionable summary of events and key conversations that take place during the day. I imagine the subtext is to digitize as much as possible of your daily existence as Apple thinks you will be comfortable with to create the kind of datapoints contextual AI requires if it is going to help with your life.
The case for it
That sounds fine, up to a point — the idea that a digital assistant will be able to recognize key events, moments, and requirements to remind us of them, act on them, or suggest next steps concerning them is certainly a notion that’s gained currency in tech circles. They see it as augmenting human achievement, enabling people to become more productive, more efficient, and capable of doing more with less effort. At least, that’s part of the argument.
What is wrong with that (other than concerns over privacy or a desire not to have one’s entire waking life transformed into a series of datapoints that can be measured, tested, or surveyed by entities outside of our control), right? If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear, at least, not until times change and what didn’t need to be hidden in the past becomes something that must be shrouded in future.
Apple’s privacy defense
Apple, of course, has its strong privacy story to lean into as it introduces this surveillance-as-a-service solution; it’s an argument that says it recognizes how this tech can be abused, and wants to deploy it correctly. It will point to that record as it promises its system doesn’t gather data, doesn’t collect it, and doesn’t keep any form of transcript on or off the device. The company should be commended for building a system that works this way, recognizing as it does that the best way to protect confidential information is not to gather it in the first place.
The warning
But what Apple has also done with this new speculated upon — and as-yet-unconfirmed product — is to show us what these tools can already do. Much of this is already visible; take recent news that LG smart TVs constantly collect and upload user data as an illustration of the seemingly egregious ways in which such tech is used. (LG denies the claim.) What Apple shows us is that with AI in the picture, all your waking moments can be collated, curated, analyzed, digitized and rendered into actionable data. Apple may not be doing that, but others will not be equally cautious, so we owe Apple a debt for warning us of what’s at stake.
Though we don’t know whether Apple will actually introduce this new service, the source of the claims is one of the strongest in the industry. What we do know is that the technology required to build systems like this exists, along with AI systems capable of sourcing, sharing, and sifting through that information. What we don’t yet know is how to remove ourselves from the data stack.
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AI note-taking applications are increasingly used by workers to record meetings, generate conversation summaries and suggest post-meeting action items.
Along with the promised productivity benefits — enabling users to focus on meetings rather than actively taking notes — the emergence of these AI tools has raised privacy questions, particularly around obtaining prior consent by meeting participants for their use. Those concerns, in turn, have prompted a spate of lawsuits against software vendors that sell AI notetaking tools.
In some ways, the underlying questions are not new: It’s long been possible to record a phone call with a dictaphone, and laws around surreptitious recording have been around for decades. Yet widespread access to AI notetakers via desktop or smartphone apps means that it’s easier than ever to record a conversation for future reference.
Among the thorny questions arising from the technology’s use: what happens to conversation data sent to a software vendor’s servers for processing? Are the recording and transcript used to train those vendors’ AI models, for example, or create biometric voiceprints? Those practices are among the issues being considered in US courts.
Otter, which claims to have 35 million users, was subject to a class-action complaint in a federal court in California last year. That complaint accused Otter of recording individuals without consent and using their voices to train its speech recognition AI tools. Last month, a judge rejected Otter’s attempt to dismiss the main claims, though the scope of the case was narrowed.
A lawsuit filed against another vendor, Fireflies, in an Illinois court late last year, alleges the company collects and stores biometric voiceprints without user consent, in violation of the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA). Fireflies claims to have more than 20 million individuals and 1 million organizations as customers.
Earlier this year, a class-action complaint in a Washington court claimed that a live transcription feature in Microsoft’s Teams collaboration application also violates BIPA by collecting biometric data without consent.
None of these cases has yet been resolved, and it’s unclear whether any of the vendors broke the law in the design and delivery of their products and services. But the lawsuits highlight considerations for businesses that allow the use of AI notetakers, both in terms of prior consent for recordings and understanding how conversation data is handled.
More broadly, the lawsuits raise questions about how existing privacy and consent rules apply to new technologies that make it easier to record others, whether through AI note-taking apps, smartglasses, or other recording devices.
Computerworld spoke with Brian McGinnis, partner at law firm Barnes & Thornburg and a founding member and co-chair of the firm’s Data Security and Privacy Law practice group, about the focus of the lawsuits, potential outcomes, and how businesses can deploy AI notetaking apps safely.
Several cases have already been brought against popular AI note-taking apps. What are some of the main commonalities between these? Which laws are the vendors accused of breaching? “The common allegation is that these companies capture communications of people who did not agree to the recording or receive adequate notice. Some of the lawsuits also allege that meeting data is used to train AI models and that consent cannot meaningfully be withdrawn once the data has been processed.
“There are various federal and state claims. You’ve got the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, a federal wiretapping statute. As a general matter, the Electronic Communications Privacy Act permits an interception when one party consents, subject to statutory exceptions and questions about whether the technology constitutes an unlawful interception or third-party eavesdropping. In other words, if you, as the user, provide consent, you can be on a meeting with 20 other people and it’s deemed to be sufficient; you don’t necessarily need to get the consent of other people.
“But California and a minority of other states are what we call ‘two-party consent’ states, meaning each individual on the call has to give consent; it’s not sufficient for you as the person who turns the notetaker on to provide the consent — you also have to get the consent of others that are being recorded. There are state laws around that.
“There’s a law called CIPA, the California Invasion of Privacy Act, that’s being utilized in this context. We see a lot of suits being brought under that law — it’s a wiretapping statute designed for telephone wiretapping that’s now being applied to the internet.”
What about the use of biometric data? “A growing number of states regulate biometric data, with Illinois’ BIPA being particularly prominent because it provides a private right of action. This means an individual can sue a company for violation of the law.
“That law covers biometric information. With an audio recording or recording of ‘dumb’ video that isn’t running any algorithms, you’re not necessarily collecting any biometrics. But when you start identifying people, you’re recording things like faceprints or voiceprints, which are in the definition of biometric information within the statute. Now you’re not only collecting personal information, but also biometric information, which is considered very sensitive and much more highly regulated.
“Then you’ve got the private right of action that goes against it. Part of the argument here is that recordings taken by the AI notetakers can be used to produce some form of biometric information, such as a voiceprint.
“We’ve seen a lot of cases, and a lot of changes in industry as a result of this law. Shutterfly had a famous case about scanning for people’s faces and things like that in Illinois that changed the photo storage and processing industry a little bit.
“A lot of companies stay out of Illinois to avoid this law specifically. But a customer organization might not know exactly who’s in a meeting and where a person is located at the time of the meeting. So, you need to either follow that law and get individual consent, or stay out of states with biometric laws if you want to use some of these tools.
“It’s just a further challenge for these applications if the goal is to be used as much as possible with as little detection as possible.”
What are some of the potential outcomes for these cases? “I think it’d be unlikely to get an outright ban, absent passing some kind of new law that says these tools are per se illegal for use. It’s much more likely the outcome will require some changes and controls over the way that they get used. The clearest case would be some kind of a pop-up notice: ‘Hey, this meeting’s being recorded, here’s who it is, here’s their privacy policy, here’s their terms of service – do you consent to it?’ And getting opt-in consent from anybody who wants to be recorded.
“The notion that only one person in the meeting has to say it’s okay and you can just automatically record everybody else, I think that’s probably at risk, and could potentially be replaced with a standard that requires everybody to consent before it’s considered legal.
“But the newer —and more interesting — wave of these is the Granola case, where part of its marketing is that people aren’t aware that it’s there. The Granola complaint alleges that the product was designed to operate without alerting other participants. It’s possible that kind of activity could result in a decision that would ultimately ban it outright. In other words, that it’s illegal to utilize these tools if you aren’t providing notice to everybody and/or aren’t getting consent from everyone on the call. That’s a possible outcome that we could see.
“To me, that’s interesting when you think beyond AI note-taking and into the broader world, with conversations around, like, Meta Glasses, or any of these kinds of AI wearables. Granola in particular has an Apple Watch app, and there are other wearable or physical devices — there’s one [Plaud Note] that sticks on the back of your phone and is essentially an always-on recording device.
“With these devices, you’re going from an online meeting where you can provide notice and there’s a structure to obtain consent, to walking down the sidewalk and recording people and casual conversations. Maybe it’s somebody you’re having a conversation with, maybe it’s somebody at the table next to you in the coffee shop that you have no relationship with whatsoever — what are the laws around consent and notice in those cases, where there’s no digital interface to put that up in front of people? Do you have to go around with a pad of paper and a pen and get people to sign consent to use these things? Do you have to physically tell them?
“Those are the more interesting conversations that this line of cases is just at the beginning of helping us get some answers on. In other words; how do you get consent? How do you provide notice in a world where we don’t have documents or screens in front of us to easily handle that? Those are interesting questions that the law will have to figure out here.”
These tools are increasingly used in the workplace. How can businesses be sure they deploy the technologies safely? “We’re getting a lot of questions from our clients about this topic, because they’re really unsure and uncertain of how to handle these tools.
“Obviously, there’s a push for broad use of AI within their companies, for productivity increases within their company. People like the tools; they want to be able to use them. But then we also hear a lot of stories about ‘I jumped on a meeting; I didn’t even know it was being recorded, then I got an email afterward with a transcript of it,’ and ‘half of what it recorded wasn’t actually what I said, or it was interpreted incorrectly’ — things like that. So there’s a lot of consternation amongst our clients about the people within their organizations using it.
“I can’t tell clients definitively that they’re legal as they are; there are ways to use this legally and safely that aren’t going to get your organization sued, but you probably have to do some things that are beyond what’s provided ‘out of the box’ by the software providers.
“With Granola, for example, my understanding is that certain notice features may not be enabled by default. You can turn on video or audio watermarking, and you can turn on the notice that pops up in these things, but I think it ships without those features enabled. That puts the responsibility on the individual user to determine and then implement their own legal privacy and legal compliance mechanisms using their settings.
“You really have to play to the most stringent state’s law. I would advise a company that, to decrease your chances of getting in trouble for use of these tools, you need to obtain consent of all parties on the call. You can do that verbally, as well; written is even better.
“Then it’s about having an internal AI note-taking policy. Think of a BYOD policy, which all these companies have, or an AI usage policy — this could be part of that policy, or a standalone policy: ‘Here’s how our organization thinks about these tools: you can only use these approved tools and, if you’re going to use them, you have to turn on these features. You have to get consent from everyone. Here are limits on what you can do with the output of those transcripts or recordings.’
“If you set all that up and do the compliance and governance work, I think you can use these tools and most likely stay on the right side of the law. Certainly, the law doesn’t prevent consenting adults from consenting to the use of these kinds of tools.
“But the further you get away from that written consent standard, the more problematic it becomes. If you just want to go to a notice standard and not obtain actual opt-in consent, or, even worse, if you want to try and do this without anybody knowing, that potentially could get challenged.”
The discussion of communication communication technologies continues as the panel of Chuck Joiner, Jeff Gamet, and Marty Jencius make the jump from telegraphs and long-distance calls to texting, smartwatches, satellite connectivity, and possible implanted devices. How science fiction anticipated so many of today’s modern communications questions such as convenience, safety, privacy, tracking, and social change wrap […]
A Gamers Nexus investigation found that LG smart TVs are almost constantly logging and uploading data about owners and their homes, even while they are offline or in standby mode. "The company's TV sets scan Wi-Fi networks for nearby devices, record audio logs through their microphones, and use audio and video sampling to recognize exactly what you're watching from across the TV inputs," reports The Verge. From the report: Gamers Nexus partnered with fellow YouTubers Level1Techs and independent security researchers for the investigation, which involved testing retail LG OLEDs. Packet captures showed the TVs scanning the local area network for nearby hardware like phones or smartwatches, as well as logging location data and details of nearby Wi-Fi networks, and feeding the information back to LG Ad Solutions. Perhaps more concerningly, the TVs were capable of recording microphone audio when in standby; this continued even after the TV was disconnected from the internet, with audio files stored offline and uploaded once a connection was restored. Earlier this year, LG was found to be silently installing an adware-like app on Windows PCs that ran pop-up ads for other LG apps and even McAfee antivirus.
Images of real children—including a member of a European royal family—were used to create some of the 350 ads containing child sexual abuse. Lawmakers say they plan to investigate.
xAI failed to pause Minnesota’s AI nudification law, leaving Grok restrictions in place as the company appeals and continues its First Amendment challenge.
A man is facing numerous felony charges in Georgia after police allege he allegedly used a bizarre projectile to melt automatic license plate readers into smoldering heaps of metal and plastic.
According to Fox5 in Atlanta, 25-year-old Colby Williams was hauled into jail after allegedly setting fire to three automatic license plate readers (ALPRs) installed by the extremely controversial company Flock.
Though it isn’t known how the fires started, at least one camera was found “completely melted,” and had a “DeFlock” sticker slapped onto what remained of the pole. A fourth camera nearby was reportedly found with two bullet holes, the news channel reported.
Ironically, Williams was arrest using video captured from the ALPRs, which picked up a vehicle registered under his name.
Williams is now being charged with four counts of criminal damage to property and four counts of arson, as well as reckless conduct and interference with government property — though Flock operates using a model known as “hardware-as-a-service,” meaning its ALPRs are only rented, not owned by police agencies.
The use of fire to disable Flock ALPRs is a new one, as far as we can tell. So far, anti-surveillance vigilantes have mostly resorted to using tools like hand saws and power drills, or barring that, spray paint.
On social media, supporters further fanned the flames, expressing support for Williams and blasting the police department for deploying the devices in the first place.
“What it boils down to is this, either y’all can take them down or somebody will!” one Facebook user declared under Fox5‘s post about the arrest.
Another commenter made an appeal to patriotism: “it wasn’t him, he was at the library rereading the Constitution!”
In an affront to creeps everywhere, Meta has started remotely bricking the smart glasses of wearers who try to secretly record other people.
Earlier this month, the Mark Zuckerberg-led company said it would crack down on customers who modified the spectacles to disable or cover up their lights that indicate when they’re recording, amid incredible public backlash against how the glasses are being used to film people without their consent — girls and women especially — and harass them.
Now, it looks like more than a few weirdos have gotten the ax. On Tuesday, Meta said it’s bricked the photo and video-taking capabilities on thousands of its smart glasses users, as part of a software update that was reported by Semafor.
Meta didn’t provide hard numbers, but its vice president of wearables Alex Himel told Semafor that it estimated that less than one tenth of a percent of all glasses sold have been tampered with. Seven million of the glasses were sold in 2025, making that fraction of a percentage translate to up to, but probably less than, 7,000 individual units.
More than a sign of Meta caring about people’s privacy, it goes to show that the abuse of its “pervert glasses” wasn’t down to just a few bad apples. A few thousand doesn’t sound like a lot, but it’s worth remembering that this crackdown only applies to customers who physically tampered with their glasses to disable the recording light. There’s no doubt that many people using the glasses to creepily record people have made no effort to modify their devices or hide that they’re recording.
Instagram, which is owned by Meta, recently began suspending some influencers who filmed themselves using the glasses as they aggressively hit on girls and women, often by making sexually explicit and provocative comments. The social media platform’s head Adam Mosseri vowed to crackdown on the harassment in “every way we can.”
Still, these efforts are a drop in the bucket, and with Meta reportedly planning to stuff the glasses with facial recognition tech, members of the public who aren’t convinced that Meta has their best interests in mind have taken matters into their own hands. Many establishments are outright banning smart glasses, including popular nightclubs. Some feel strongly enough about the glass that they’re confronting people who wear them in public.
Himel, Meta’s VP of wearables, admitted that it’s fighting an uphill battle.
“It’s been a little bit of a cat and mouse game,” Himel told Semafor, adding that “I don’t think we’ll ever be done… There’s always new ways to get around the safeguards that are in place. So we’re going to keep monitoring and evolving the measures that we have.”
App Tracking Transparency is at the center of a new UK lawsuit seeking approximately $2.7 billion (£2 billion), putting one of the most recognizable iPhone privacy features under fresh legal pressure. The claim follows earlier challenges to the tracking system in France, but this action seeks compensation for developers who say Apple imposed unfair restrictions on their businesses while favoring its own advertising services.
Filed on September 3 at London’s Competition Appeal Tribunal, the case represents another dispute over the rules behind the familiar permission prompt. Apple rejects the allegations and maintains that it follows the same App Tracking Transparency requirements as other developers.
The amount being sought is not a fine or an awarded payment. It is the claimants’ estimate of losses, which Apple disputes.
What the App Tracking Transparency Lawsuit Alleges
The action was brought by ATT Collective Action Limited, whose director, Ann Pope, previously led antitrust enforcement at the UK Competition and Markets Authority. Law firm Hausfeld is representing the proposed class.
According to Hausfeld’s announcement of the claim, developers argue that Apple introduced the framework unfairly, without adequate consultation, and applied more burdensome requirements to outside businesses than to its own services.
The complaint focuses partly on consent. It alleges that third-party developers must obtain permission under data-protection law and then secure an additional approval through the iOS tracking prompt. Apple’s advertising services, the claimants argue, operate under a less demanding process.
Developers also contend that the introduction left them insufficient time to adapt business models dependent on advertising.
These are allegations about how the system was designed and introduced—not established findings in this UK case. The claimants’ stated position is that privacy protections should remain compatible with fair treatment of businesses.
Image Credit: AppleMagazine
What the Tracking Prompt Actually Protects
For someone using an iPhone, App Tracking Transparency offers a direct choice about a practice that previously could be difficult to see.
An app may want to connect information about your activity with information gathered through other companies’ apps or websites. That connection can help advertisers build a profile, target advertisements, or measure whether an advertising campaign led to a purchase.
Under Apple’s explanation of the tracking rules, apps must request permission before carrying out the tracking covered by the framework. Choosing “Ask App Not to Track” blocks access to the system advertising identifier and prohibits using other identifying information to perform that tracking instead.
The feature arrived with iOS 14.5 in 2021. It does not remove advertisements, make an app anonymous, or serve as a universal switch for every kind of data collection.
That boundary matters. A retailer remembering purchases made within its own service is not automatically doing the same thing as an advertising company linking activity across unrelated businesses.
The disagreement concerns whether those distinctions, and the consent processes built around them, give Apple an unfair commercial advantage.
Apple Says the Same Rules Apply to Everyone
Apple has responded directly to the lawsuit, defending the feature as a way to give people control over tracking across other companies’ services.
In a statement reported by AFP, a spokesperson said: “Apple is bound by the exact same requirements as all developers under ATT.”
The company also pointed to support for the feature from customers and privacy advocates.
That response challenges the foundation of the developers’ case. Apple presents App Tracking Transparency as a rule based on the type of data activity involved. The claimants argue that its practical operation places competing advertising businesses at a disadvantage.
Resolving that disagreement requires more than comparing the appearance of two permission screens. The underlying data uses, consent requirements, and commercial effects all matter.
Why Free Apps Are Part of the Dispute
Advertising can support both sides of an app business. A developer may sell advertising space inside a free app while also buying advertisements elsewhere to attract new users.
A change to tracking can therefore affect how much an app earns and how confidently its developer can measure spending on promotion.
Consider a small game studio. It needs to know whether an advertising campaign brings in players who keep using the game. If measurement becomes less precise, deciding where to spend the next marketing dollar becomes harder. Separately, advertisers may value the game’s available ad space differently when less information is available for targeting.
That explains the commercial concern without proving the legal claim. Losing revenue after a privacy change does not, by itself, establish that the change was unlawful.
There is also a consumer interest that cannot be reduced to advertising performance. Someone choosing not to be tracked is expressing a preference about personal information, not making a promise to preserve a developer’s previous income.
The difficult question is whether that preference can be protected through a system that treats competing businesses fairly.
France Has Already Examined the Consent Process
The UK action arrives after a separate French competition investigation found problems with the implementation of App Tracking Transparency.
In its March 2025 decision, France’s Autorité de la concurrence distinguished between the legitimate objective of protecting privacy and the way Apple pursued it.
The authority criticized multiple consent requests and differences in treatment between Apple and outside publishers. It also highlighted the position of smaller businesses that lack the extensive first-party data available to large platforms.
Importantly, the French authority did not argue that people should lose the ability to refuse tracking. It said adjustments to the framework could address competition concerns while retaining privacy protections.
That distinction leaves room for changes to wording, consent flows, or implementation without automatically requiring the removal of the feature. The French decision, however, does not determine liability or compensation in the separate UK proceedings.
The Claim Is for Developers, Not iPhone Owners
The official claim website describes a proposed action for UK-based app developers affected since April 2021. It estimates losses across the group rather than offering a fixed payment to everyone who owns an iPhone.
The proposed scope includes developers earning advertising revenue from third-party iOS apps and developers spending money to attract users to those apps. Whether compensation becomes available depends on the proceedings and their outcome.
For U.S. readers, the filing does not announce a change to domestic iPhone settings or create a consumer refund program. There is no reason to grant an app tracking permission simply because its developer objects to the framework.
Businesses following the case should also distinguish registering interest from receiving compensation. The claim website currently invites affected organizations to provide their details; it is not distributing a settlement.
Well, tell that to president Trump. On Thursday, he slapped a 100 percent tariff — he sure loves round numbers and levying imports — on larger foreign-made drones.
Speaking to the New York Times, Scott Mlakar, chief of the Lake County Drone Unit outside Cleveland, called the tariffs financially onerous and lamented that it would prevent many communities from buying them, adding that his unit uses them to hunt crime suspects at night and search for lost children.
“Most of this, in our humble opinion, is lobbying by US manufacturers to eliminate foreign competition,” he said. “This is not national security. It’s protectionism.”
The tariff is explicitly designed to target popular Chinese drones, while making exceptions or imposing much lighter tariffs on drones made from allies like Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, and the EU. In particular, these steep duties will apply to drones that use thermal imaging or weigh more than 55 pounds. In addition, the Federal Communications Commission is weighing reclassifying some drone technologies like lidar as “military grade,” Ars noted, which would restrict who can access these drones even further.
Drones have a lot of other practical uses beyond law enforcement, obviously, including monitoring wild fires and assisting rescue operations. Amid heightened backlash against Flock, though, they’ve come to be seen as another surveillance apparatus.
But weaning the US off Chinese drone tech is supposed to be good for national security, according to the Trump administration. One small problem: a single Chinese company, DJI, makes more than 70 percent of the world’s commercial drones, according to the NYT. Good luck replacing all those.
Plenty of other cops are bellyaching about the tariffs, too, extolling how irreplaceable that awesome Chinese made drones have become to their operation.
Ars spotted a Texas police officer named Jason Lee, for instance, who complained to the FCC that “there is currently no economically viable domestic replacement” for DJI drones. “More than 80 percent of state and local law-enforcement drone programs surveyed in 2024 used DJI aircraft,” he added.
“The fact that a domestic product exists does not necessarily mean it is a viable substitute,” Lee said. “A replacement must be operationally comparable, economically obtainable, supported by an adequate supply chain, and accepted by pilots who must rely on it during real-world incidents.”
Politicians on the right and left are pushing back against Flock as more Americans voice opposition to the tech
Growing factions from both sides of the political aisle in the US are pushing back against surveillance cameras made by a single company, a rare response in a sharply divided country with a president pushing an unwaveringly pro-tech agenda.
The bipartisan backlash against Flock Safety cameras resembles nationwide rage toward the construction of large datacenters that power artificial intelligence. Polling shows roughly 75% of Americans oppose new datacenter construction in their areas.
Talking to an AI chatbot can feel like confiding in a mirror, a private exchange equivalent to brainstorming in a Word document. Yet when it comes to the most popular AI chatbots, that mirror is really one-way glass — and you might be shocked to learn how many different people can watch from the other side.
Since the rise of easily accessible AI chatbots, untold millions of people have happily fed AI models their deepest, darkest secrets. According to a recent survey conducted by browser company DuckDuckGo and flagged by CNET, a full third of all AI users admit to having told their chatbots a secret they wouldn’t tell the “trusted people” in their lives.
There’s a grim irony there, because by telling an AI chatbot those closely guarded secrets, you may inadvertently be sharing intimate details with tech companies, police departments, lawyers, and even your boss. That’s according to new reporting by the Washington Post, which notes that there have been a dozen court cases where chatbot transcripts were cited in the public record over the last two years.
Even if your transcripts don’t end up in the hands of Johnny Law, they can easily be obtained by your boss, assuming you’re using a company-provided AI service. And of course, there’s no telling how long AI companies like OpenAI and Anthropic might hold onto details of your conversations, as WaPo notes numerous scenarios in which they may be required to hold onto your chatlogs by law.
There’s also the grim possibility of leaks from the AI companies themselves. In July, it was revealed that a whole trove of chats with Anthropic’s chatbot Claude had been exposed to the open web — and not for the first time.
“Unless you are having a chat with a service that has a temporary chat or, basically, an incognito version… [and] you’re also having it within a browser that’s not tracking you, the answer is no,” Jen King, a privacy researcher at the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence told WaPo. “You can’t be sure that it’ll be totally private.”
And though users are remarkably comfortable divulging those details to their favorite bot, fewer are aware of those myriad ways their chat logs might live on in perpetuity. According to the DuckDuckGo poll, 53 percent of regular users said they didn’t know that AI chatbots are training on data obtained through their conversation, while 75 percent didn’t realize that conversations with large language models (LLMs) can easily be subpoenaed by police.
So when in doubt about whether to tell ChatGPT about your intimate relationship troubles, keep in mind that the internet is forever; and that goes double for AI chatbots.
The destiny of Spirit Airline’s data is still undecided, months after the company sought bankruptcy protection.
AI data company Micro1 has now offered $12.5 million to acquire a trove of the company’s emails, Teams chats, operations and employee productivity data, according to a report by aviation website Simply Flying,
It said the data includes about 600 million email and chat records generated by 17,000 employees, as well as 17 million OneDrive files, 20.5 million SharePoint items, and more than 30 million recorded customer service calls. Such a large repository of information is a gold mine to any company looking to train AI models more effectively. The report says that this data includes sensitive, decades-old employee and workplace records.
But Micro1’s offer comes weeks after Google acquired the data at auction, with its $10 million bid beating the $7.5 million offered by another AI training company, Mercor.
Nelson, international president of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, which continues to represent more than 5,500 of Spirit’s flight attendants, told Forbes that former flight attendants were unhappy about Spirit attempting to cash in on sensitive data when they still have not been paid their accrued vacation time, sick leave, and outstanding compensation.
However, this type of personal data is extremely valuable to the likes of Google. It means that AI models can be trained in more realistic scenarios. One option that is being explored is whether the data can be anonymized, which may offer a way forward to keep both sides happy.
While most of the vandals ripping down automatic license plate readers prefer to go incognito, an Albuquerque character named Jevon Martinez isn’t afraid to show his face.
Weeks after Bernalillo county officials cancelled their contract with the controversial surveillance company Flock earlier this year, Martinez noticed the automatic license plate readers (ALPRs) were still up. In a series of videos posted on social media and flagged by KOB4, Martinez filmed himself tearing the camera towers down in order to return them to their rightful owners.
“Since [Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Department] is busy — I know BCSO is busy, everyone who works for BCSO, I know you guys are busy, so I went ahead and helped you out,” Martinez says while driving his pickup truck, the bed of which is notably full of ALPR parts.
“We got a bunch of these bad boys,” he says in another video, showing off a truck bed stuffed to the brim with tower parts. “Let’s see how much I can get in one day. That’s gonna be the challenge for everyone out there.”
Playing the helpful citizen, Martinez drove his literal truckload of ALPR bits directly to the Sheriff’s department, where he was promptly taken into custody.
Though he wasn’t armed and hadn’t committed any violent offense, officers made a dramatic show of force as they arrested him. Clad with ballistic-resistant plate carriers, the deputies surrounded Martinez’s truck, drawing their guns and forcing him into cuffs.
“Is this a crime? I don’t think so,” Martinez said in one of his videos. “Neither does the public. I’m just liberating my people from tyranny.”
Adam Engst explains why AI software development should be approached as an evolution, starting with safe, verifiable data analysis, advancing to simple scripts, and eventually building applications. He distinguishes programming from development, arguing that non-programmers can act as product managers who direct AI, demand security checks, define requirements, and create software tailored to problems existing apps do not solve. (3)
Our conversation with Adam Engst continues with an exploration of how AI can help non-programmers build sophisticated software by following professional development practices. Adam explains using specifications, architecture documents, and AI-guided decisions to create reliable apps, then examines the approach his app, SetShot, takes to macOS settings, privacy, security, user feedback, Cloudflare, GitHub, and minimizing sensitive data collection.
Not long ago, I rented an SUV from a well-known car rental company. Within hours of an employee scanning my driver's license, a high-resolution scan of my ID was available for sale on the dark web.
An exposé published Tuesday by KrebsOnSecurity reports that my license was one of more than 153 million that were available through Nexus, the name of the new ID theft service. Like other driver's licenses available there—including some belonging to journalist Brian Krebs, his mother, an FBI assistant director, and several security researchers—my license was purported to include multiple image files showing both the front and back of the ID. Besides a basic image scan, the files also captured the images in the infrared and ultraviolet spectrums. Presumably, the additional formats may allow cloned-based counterfeit IDs to pass hologram tests.
Growing by the day
Besides advertising the availability of driver's licenses, Nexus offered to sell a bevy of other forms of ID. They included:
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