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Title: Meta warns users to 'avoid sharing personal or sensitive information'
in its AI app

Date: Mon, 16 Jun 2025 23:39:00 +0000
Link: https://www.engadget.com/social-media/meta-wa...

Meta seems to have finally taken a small step to address the epidemic of over-
sharing happening in the public feed of its AI app. The company has added a
short disclaimer that warns users to "avoid sharing personal or sensitive
information" to the "post to feed" button in the Meta AI app.

The change was first spotted by Business Insider, which labeled the app "one
of the most depressing places online" due to the sheer volume of intimate,
embarrassing and sometimes personally-identifying information Meta AI users
were ΓÇö apparently unwittingly ΓÇö publicly sharing to the app's built-in
"discover" feed. Though Meta AI doesn't share users' chat histories by
default, it seems that many of the app's users were choosing to "share" their
interactions without realizing it would make the voice and text chats visible
to the public.

Last week, I found posts where users asked for advice on "improving bowel
movements" and inquiring whether a relative could be liable for their
employer's unpaid taxes. Another user desperately added "keep this private"
to his public posts in an apparent attempt to hide his embarrassing chats
after the fact. These types of strange public interactions have been
happening since the Meta AI app rolled out in April, but received renewed
attention last week after social media users began posting about all of the
weird conversations that were visible in the app's "discover" feed.

Privacy experts criticized Meta, noting that most other mainstream AI
chatbots don't include a social, publicly-visible feed. "If a userΓÇÖs
expectations about how a tool functions donΓÇÖt match reality, youΓÇÖve got
yourself a huge user experience and security problem," Rachel Tobac, a
security expert who has previously partnered with Meta, observed last week.
"Humans have built a schema around AI chat bots and do not expect their AI
chat bot prompts to show up in a social media style Discover feed ΓÇö itΓÇÖs
not how other tools function." The Mozilla Foundation also urged Meta to
change the app's design. "Meta AI's app doesnΓÇÖt make it obvious that what
you share goes fully public," it wrote in a statement last week ThereΓÇÖs no
clear iconography, no familiar cues about sharing like in other Meta apps."

Now, the company has apparently taken note. With the change, choosing to
share a Meta AI interaction publicly prompts the warning seen above, though
it only seems to appear on the first share. "Prompts you post are public and
visible to everyone," it states. "Your prompts may be suggested by Meta on
other Meta apps. Avoid sharing personal or sensitive information."

As Business Insider notes, the app's public feed also seems to no longer
feature text exchanges other users have shared with the app, only AI-
generated images and video. It's unclear if that's a permanent change, or the
result of the recent negative attention the app's received. We've reached out
to Meta for more information and will update if we hear back.

In the meantime, if you've found yourself the victim of unintended public
posts in the app, you can remove them by tapping on your profile in the top
right corner of the app, heading to Data & Privacy -> Manage your information
-> Make all public prompts visible only to you and selecting "apply to all."

This article originally appeared on Engadget at
https://www.engadget.com/social-media/meta-wa...
personal-or-sensitive-information-in-its-ai-app-233900625.html?src=rss

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