Meredith Whittaker warns chatbots can become privacy backdoors | Ukraine news
Meredith Whittaker warns chatbots can become privacy backdoors | Ukraine news
https://mezha.net/eng/bukvy/5140d388_meredith_whittaker_warns/
Publish Date: 2026-06-20 17:20:00
Source Domain: mezha.net
A leading privacy advocate describes how granting AI sweeping access could turn assistants into covert entry points and erode user control.
In a wide-ranging interview with Bloomberg about privacy policy, the future of artificial intelligence, and Signal’s role, Meredith Whittaker, president of Signal, spoke about the privacy of chatbots like ChatGPT and Claude.
These are not your friends. These are not conscious beings. These are not self-aware conversational partners.
– Bloomberg
Whittaker also noted that she sometimes uses AI tools to format documents, but she doesn’t ask them questions and aims to keep the ideation process open.
What you just described is a system with very broad access to several apps and services. In the context of Signal, this would be a kind of backdoor.
– Meredith Whittaker
Regarding Mustafa Suleyman’s assertion, the CEO of Microsoft AI, that users may entrust Copilot to handle all their Christmas purchases, Whittaker noted that such a prospect would mean giving Copilot access to a credit card, a browser, Signal, the ability to send messages to relatives on behalf of the user, home address, and calendar. In this context, for Signal it would effectively be a backdoor.
In summary, Whittaker emphasizes the need for strict privacy protection and control over data access during the deployment and use of AI to avoid potential risks for users.
