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Incident 636: AI Romance Apps Reportedly Compromise User Privacy for Data Harvesting

Description: AI-powered romantic chatbots, marketed for enhancing mental health, are found to exploit user privacy by harvesting sensitive personal information for data sharing and targeted ads, with inadequate security measures and consent protocols, according to research by the Mozilla Foundation.

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Entities

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Alleged: Replika , Chai , Romantic AI , EVA AI Chat Bot & Soulmate , CrushOn.AI and Genesia AI Friend & Partner developed and deployed an AI system, which harmed General public and Chatbot users.

Incident Stats

Incident ID
636
Report Count
5
Incident Date
2024-02-14
Editors
Applied Taxonomies
GMF, MIT

MIT Taxonomy Classifications

Machine-Classified
Taxonomy Details

Risk Subdomain

A further 23 subdomains create an accessible and understandable classification of hazards and harms associated with AI
 

2.1. Compromise of privacy by obtaining, leaking or correctly inferring sensitive information

Risk Domain

The Domain Taxonomy of AI Risks classifies risks into seven AI risk domains: (1) Discrimination & toxicity, (2) Privacy & security, (3) Misinformation, (4) Malicious actors & misuse, (5) Human-computer interaction, (6) Socioeconomic & environmental harms, and (7) AI system safety, failures & limitations.
 
  1. Privacy & Security

Entity

Which, if any, entity is presented as the main cause of the risk
 

Human

Timing

The stage in the AI lifecycle at which the risk is presented as occurring
 

Post-deployment

Intent

Whether the risk is presented as occurring as an expected or unexpected outcome from pursuing a goal
 

Intentional

Incident Reports

Reports Timeline

+3
Happy Valentine’s Day! Romantic AI Chatbots Don’t Have Your Privacy at Heart
+1
AI girlfriends will only break your heart, privacy experts warn
Happy Valentine’s Day! Romantic AI Chatbots Don’t Have Your Privacy at Heart

Happy Valentine’s Day! Romantic AI Chatbots Don’t Have Your Privacy at Heart

foundation.mozilla.org

Your AI Girlfriend Is a Data-Harvesting Horror Show

Your AI Girlfriend Is a Data-Harvesting Horror Show

gizmodo.com

AI girlfriend chatbots are probably spilling everyone's secrets

AI girlfriend chatbots are probably spilling everyone's secrets

qz.com

AI girlfriends will only break your heart, privacy experts warn

AI girlfriends will only break your heart, privacy experts warn

businessinsider.com

Don’t date robots — their privacy policies are terrible

Don’t date robots — their privacy policies are terrible

theverge.com

Happy Valentine’s Day! Romantic AI Chatbots Don’t Have Your Privacy at Heart
foundation.mozilla.org · 2024

Howdy and welcome to the wild west of romantic AI chatbots, where new apps are published so quickly they don't even have time to put up a proper website! (Looking at you, Mimico - Your AI Friends.) It's a strange and sometimes scary place y…

Your AI Girlfriend Is a Data-Harvesting Horror Show
gizmodo.com · 2024

Lonely on Valentine’s Day? AI can help. At least, that’s what a number of companies hawking “romantic” chatbots will tell you. But as your robot love story unfolds, there’s a tradeoff you may not realize you’re making. According to a new st…

AI girlfriend chatbots are probably spilling everyone's secrets
qz.com · 2024

In an ongoing loneliness epidemic, the rise of AI chatbot companions and romantic partners might be meeting some people’s needs, but researchers found these bots aren’t the best of friends when it comes to protecting secrets.

*Privacy Not I…

AI girlfriends will only break your heart, privacy experts warn
businessinsider.com · 2024

There's a potentially dangerous reality looming beneath the veneer of AI romance, according to a new Valentine's Day-themed study, which concluded that the chatbots can be a privacy nightmare.

Internet nonprofit The Mozilla Foundation took …

Don’t date robots — their privacy policies are terrible
theverge.com · 2024

Talkie Soulful Character AI, Chai, iGirl: AI Girlfriend, Romantic AI, Genesia - AI Friend & Partner, Anima: My Virtual AI Boyfriend, Replika, Anima: AI Friend, Mimico - Your AI Friends, EVA AI Chat Bot & Soulmate, and CrushOn.AI are not jus…

Variants

A "variant" is an incident that shares the same causative factors, produces similar harms, and involves the same intelligent systems as a known AI incident. Rather than index variants as entirely separate incidents, we list variations of incidents under the first similar incident submitted to the database. Unlike other submission types to the incident database, variants are not required to have reporting in evidence external to the Incident Database. Learn more from the research paper.
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