Mark Zuckerberg’s foray into AI chatbots has sparked a ‘privacy nightmare’ with some users’ intimate chats and questions shared on to a public newsfeed.
Some users unwittingly activated a sharing function, resulting in their conversations with the AI bot to be shared to a ‘discover’ page available to strangers.
This feature sets it apart from more established and well known AI servers, like ChatGPT or Elon Musk’s Grok, in that users who opt in are sharing deeply personal information about their sex lives, finances or health status without realizing that their conversations are being made public.
The feed shows off prompts, conversations, and image outputs from other users, similar to the way a Facebook feed works, which is also part of the Meta umbrella.
Users have shared their startup businesses, seeking advice or business proposals, while others have plugged deeply personal custody details into the server seeking advice ahead of an upcoming court appearance.
Meta spokesman Daniel Roberts told Business Insider that Meta.ai does not automatically share conversations to the discover feed, and that users must ‘opt in.’
But doing so only requires two steps – clicking ‘Share’ and then ‘Post’ – which could be confusing for users navigating the app for the first time.
For many accounts, a person’s real Facebook or Instagram handle is attached to their Meta.ai profile, meaning they lack privacy if they are unintentionally making posts public.
App data suggests Meta.ai has been downloaded 6.5 million times since it debuted on April 29.
During a conference hosted by technology company Stripe last month, Zuckerberg suggested that it may actually be better for people to seek out friends, therapists, and even lovers that are all powered by AI.
Zuckerberg claimed AI can actually do a better job of knowing the likes and preferences of lonely humans than a human companion.
‘I think people are going to want a system that knows them well and that kind of understands them in the way that their feed algorithms do,’ Zuckerberg said.
‘For people who don’t have a person who’s a therapist, I think everyone will have an AI.’
Zuckerberg added he believes that the average person has a desire for about 15 friends, at which point having more close relationships becomes too much to handle.
While Meta’s leader may see a future in digital friend circles, the surprising comments almost immediately received pushback from countless people on social media – and other tech industry execs.
Meghana Dhar, a former Instagram executive, quickly came out against Zuckerberg’s lonely vision of the future, claiming that AI has actually been part of the reason feelings of loneliness have reached epidemic levels.
‘The very platforms that have led to our social isolation and being chronically online are now posing a solution to the loneliness epidemic,’ Dhar told The Wall Street Journal.
‘It almost seems like the arsonist coming back and being the fireman,’ she added.
Zuckerberg has been working tirelessly to position Meta in the high-stakes race for dominance in artificial intelligence.
Last week, the company made headlines with its $14.3 billion acquisition of Scale AI, securing a 49 percent non-voting stake in the startup and access to its infrastructure and talent – including founder Alexandr Wang, who now leads Meta’s new ‘superintelligence’ unit.
The move has triggered backlash from rivals, with OpenAI and Google severing ties with Scale over conflict-of-interest concerns, the New York Post reported.
With plans to spend $65 billion annually on AI by 2025, the technology company is ‘betting big.’
But, the ambitious approach comes with risks, including mounting costs, regulatory scrutiny, and challenges in retaining top engineering talent.
As of Friday, Zuckerberg was the world’s second-richest person, with a net worth of $245 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Zuckerberg’s evolution from a traditional Silicon Valley liberal to someone increasingly aligned with Donald Trump, 79, has become a hallmark of his leadership at Meta.
Once known as a low-profile, hoodie-clad Democrat, Zuckerberg has reshaped his public persona – appearing shirtless in MMA training videos, sporting gold chains, flaunting luxury watches and appearing on Joe Rogan’s podcast.
His public praise for Trump and reductions in content moderation at Meta have further intensified concerns about the company’s ideological direction, the Financial Times reported.
