Addressing the privacy implications surrounding advanced chatbots like ChatGPT and Claude, Signal President Meredith Whittaker issued a stark warning, stating, “These are not your friends. These are not conscious beings. These are not sentient interlocutors.”
These remarks were made during an extensive Bloomberg interview where Whittaker discussed policy, privacy, and the Signal platform. While acknowledging her own limited use of AI tools, such as “to format a document here and there,” she firmly asserted, “I don’t ask them questions.” Whittaker emphasized her commitment to critical thought and original composition, explaining, “I’m very serious about my thinking and writing, and I don’t want the process of working through an idea […] to be foreclosed or eclipsed by the response of a system that’s averaging what’s already out there.”
Turning to Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman’s forecast that users might delegate their entire Christmas shopping to Microsoft Copilot this year, Whittaker challenged the underlying privacy trade-offs. She argued that a scenario where Copilot “eavesdrops” on family group chats to discern gift preferences would necessitate granting it “access to my credit card, my browser, my Signal, the ability to message my siblings on my behalf, my home address [and] my calendar.”
“What you’ve just described is a system with very pervasive access across multiple applications and services,” Whittaker concluded, highlighting the extensive reach such integration would demand. She further specified that, “In the context of Signal, it would constitute a kind of a backdoor.”
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