Meta AI may have a ‘personal problem’ and a very serious one, and it's a warning for users

The Meta AI app may have a "personal chat problem" that has the potential to escalate into a major privacy issue. Users of the AI assistant developed by Facebook's parent company have complained that its "Discover" feed is reportedly displaying user prompts publicly without them being aware of the same. This feature was introduced with the transition from the Meta View app to the Meta AI app in April. It allows others to see the types of prompts people are submitting to Meta’s AI chatbot. However, a concerned user named Justine Moore took to the social media platform X (earlier Twitter) to note observing prompts in the public feed that suggest users may not know that their queries are being openly displayed. This raises significant privacy implications for users interacting with the Meta AI service.

How Meta AI is leaking personal chats of users

In the X post, Moore shared screenshots of personal chats that Meta AI is showing other users and wrote: “Wild things are happening on Meta’s AI app. The feed is almost entirely boomers who seem to have no idea their conversations with the chatbot are posted publicly. They get pretty personal (see second pic, which I anonymized).”

Later on, in the same thread shared transcribes of some chats, Moore further wrote: “To clarify - conversations aren’t public by default. You have to hit a “share” button, but many users seem to think it’s posting to a private journal. Resulting in things like this…a man trying to write a romantic poem for his gf. You can hear a 6 min audio clip, here’s a transcribed excerpt:”

“Obsessed with this man who tries to use the app to find a woman with a ‘big b**ty and nice r**k.’ When it won’t post on his behalf in local FB groups, he asks the bot to “delete my number.’ Instead, he (accidentally?) shares it publicly - I redacted,” Moore further added.

As Moore suggests, users have been unintentionally exposing sensitive information on Meta AI. Users are advised to refrain from sharing prompts containing private medical and tax details, addresses, and intimate confessions (ranging from relationship doubts to personal dating inquiries) with the app as they seem to be appearing publicly.