AI-driven financial advice: Privacy concerns and tips – Indianapolis News | Indiana Weather

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(CNN) — If you’re financially pressed, confused about money, or just want a little free help figuring out how to improve your cash flow, you may be tempted to use AI.

But you should know how to protect yourself before chatting about your finances with any AI tool (eg, ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini, or Claude) so you don’t allow your sensitive personal information to be inadvertently exposed to others, including some who might use it to harm you. Also, you can’t count on AI to instruct you to protect your privacy – although depending on the wording of your prompt, it might.

For instance, earlier this month the popular podcaster and author Mel Robbins encouraged her followers on Instagram to try AI – and specifically Microsoft Copilot – to help them get control over their money. (In her video caption, she said she’d partnered with Microsoft Copilot.)

In the comments section to her post, Robbins offered a suggested prompt to use, which included the sentence: “I’ll share documents like bank statements, debt statements, bills, and income info when you ask.”

Neither her post nor her prompt included recommendations to redact sensitive information. (More on why you should do that below.)

A spokesperson for Robbins’ office said in an email that Copilot offered privacy warnings once a person put in Robbins’ exact prompt and shared the text of the replies they got when doing so. But when CNN used Robbins’ prompt in the free version of Copilot it got slightly different replies and nothing like the privacy warning the spokesperson had shared. (When asked why, a Microsoft spokesperson said “responses will vary even when the questions are the same or similar. Copilot, like other conversational AI assistants, adapts to the flow of the conversation, tone, and context.”)

In response to many followers’ criticisms of her original prompt, Robbins last Friday acknowledged their concerns and thanked them for the feedback in…

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