Signal's Whittaker warns AI chatbots are not your friends
Original: Signal’s Meredith Whittaker wants you to remember that AI chatbots ‘are not your friends’
Why This Matters
Highlights privacy and security risks of integrated AI systems with cross-platform access to personal communications and data.
Signal President Meredith Whittaker cautioned that AI chatbots like ChatGPT and Claude are not conscious beings or friends, and criticized scenarios where AI systems gain pervasive access across multiple applications and services.
In an interview with Bloomberg, Signal President Meredith Whittaker addressed privacy concerns surrounding AI chatbots. She stated: "These are not your friends. These are not conscious beings. These are not sentient interlocutors." Whittaker acknowledged using AI tools occasionally to format documents, but emphasized she avoids asking them questions, saying: "I'm very serious about my thinking and writing, and I don't want the process of working through an idea [to] be foreclosed or eclipsed by the response of a system that's averaging what's already out there." Whittaker specifically criticized Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman's prediction that users could let Microsoft Copilot handle Christmas shopping by monitoring family group chats. She argued this scenario would require giving the system "access to my credit card, my browser, my Signal, the ability to message my siblings on my behalf, my home address [and] my calendar." She concluded: "What you've just described is a system with very pervasive access across multiple applications and services. In the context of Signal, it would constitute a kind of a backdoor."