I opened Meta AI today and was confronted with a woman’s voice asking the app about details for pressing domestic abuse charges with the question, “In Indiana, if a wife does not want to press charges for abuse, can the state?”And I wonder if she knew that me, a stranger living in New York, would hear her intimate question.
If you want to read some of the people’s wildest hopes, creative dreams and anxieties, go to the “Discover” feed of Meta AI app, the tech company’s standalone chatbot app.
On Meta AI’s “Discover” feed, users’ questions and ideas with the chatbot app are public for anyone to see. This “Discover” feed is similar to a social media feed and can show users’ prompts, conversations and image requests that other users are asking Meta AI.
Meta AI interactions can range from tame casual requests for free ideas of what to do for date nights and the best time to eat a burger for digestion to revealing details about people’s personal situations and marriages.
Look long enough and you can find personal quirks from people you may rather not know, but now can’t unlearn. I saw someone workshopping an anniversary post on the “transformative power of love in an arranged marriage.” I personally wish I could unsee what a “busty anthro in the hot springs” looks like, but now I can’t unsee what a sultry humanoid fox with large breasts looks like.
Meta’s blog post on the AI app that the “Discover” feed is a space to explore how others are using the app and get ideas on the best prompts. But when I used the app, I didn’t feel inspired — I felt sad. I wished the people sharing their anxieties, creativity and vulnerable questions could talk to a human instead of an app owned by a tech conglomerate.
Sometimes, the “Discover” feed can also reveal depressing fears, like a person claiming to be a 72-year-old worrying about sleeping on the sidewalk, as Business Insider.
It’s unclear if some of these posts are trolling the platform after news outlets on the bizarre conversations people were asking Meta AI, but there are a significant amount of seemingly sensitive and private prompts and conversations to Meta AI that you can find on the “Discover” feed.
Meta said in an emailed statement to HuffPost that users’ chats with Meta AI are private unless users go through multiple steps to share them on the Discover feed that include tapping “Share” and affirmatively tapping to post.
If you use the Meta AI app today and try to post publicly, you will first read a warning that “Prompts you post are public and visible to everyone” before you share.
On Meta AI, you also have the option to link your Instagram or account to your Meta AI posts, which can make your identity even more visible.
If you feel exposed by your past public conversations with Meta AI, you can also change the setting to be more private. To do that, go to “Settings,” then “Data & Privacy.” Select “Manage your information,” and then “Make all public prompts visible to only you.”