Why you should think twice before spilling your guts to a chatbot
Chatbots are .
These artificial intelligence-powered digital assistants that can check the weather, read the latest headlines, do your banking, and help you shop for clothes are proliferating on Facebook Messenger. In fact, are now available via Messenger.
But the rapid spread of chatbots is raising fresh privacy concerns, too. Due to the personal nature of the bots 鈥� encouraging users to reveal intimate details about their habits and personal lives 鈥� some experts worry that consumers aren鈥檛 aware of how just much insight these bots have into their lives, and who is actually using the information.
鈥淐hatbots may be able to get us to say more about ourselves than an ordinary website,鈥� says Ryan Calo, codirector of the Tech Policy Lab at the University of Washington.
A major factor is convenience. The always-on interface is meant to make asking the digital assistants to do things 鈥撎齦ike ordering food with a simple text message 鈥� seamless for the user. And because of the simple, conversational interface, users might be tempted to tell the bots things they wouldn鈥檛 ordinarily post of type into an ordinary online order form.
鈥淐onsider a chatbot that leverages the social principle of reciprocity,鈥� says Mr. Calo. 鈥淚f a chatbot, like an online form, just says: 鈥楨nter your age here,鈥� you might not. But if amidst a conversation with a chatbot it says, 鈥業 was created last year. When were you born?鈥� you well might. At least that's what experimental studies by Cliff Nass and others have shown.鈥� (One such study can be found .)
While chatbots are just in their infancy, the ballooning ecosystem of personal assistants could collectively amass an even more intimate portrait of consumers and their behaviors than within the data archives of Google, Facebook, or Twitter.
鈥淚 think of chatbots as heralds of what's coming 鈥� increasingly sophisticated social technologies that are so pervasive that we never feel alone,鈥� says Calo.
As chatbots evolve and become more intelligent, they could be designed to tailor responses to make users more comfortable with giving away increasingly personal information, or telling the bots their true feelings. The machines could customize responses so that users don鈥檛 feel judged based on their views, thus giving many companies that are deploying chatbots a more accurate view of consumers.
鈥淧ollsters always worry about whether people are willing to give their real opinion because they worry that the person on the phone may judge them for being racist or ignorant or just judge them in general,鈥� says Dave Maass, an investigative researcher at the tech advocacy group Electronic Frontier Foundation. 鈥淏ut having a conversation with a chatbot might make people more honest.鈥�
Still, chatbots are currently limited by the information that users provide to them. But what happens if and when chatbots are able to collect and analyze all the information that Facebook already has about a user 鈥� location, birthdays, names of friends and families, anniversaries, and career information?
鈥淭he success of bots relies a lot on their understanding of the user's context,鈥� says Hamza Harkous, a PhD student at Switzerland鈥檚 脡cole Polytechnique F茅d茅rale de Lausanne who has studied the effect chatbots have on privacy. 鈥淭his is an avenue where bots are currently limited: they don't have full permissions to access users' data, photos, location, or device sensors.鈥�
Of course, Facebook already has much of this information on users. Mr. Harkous worries that the company鈥檚 desire to establish Messenger as the go-to platform for chatbots could eventually lead it to share some of this information with companies using its platform, and that it might do so even if its users don鈥檛 know that data exchange is happening or don鈥檛 fully understand its implications.
鈥淲ith time, the need for a better user experience could force Facebook to grant more permissions directly to bots,鈥� Harkous said. 鈥淚t would be interesting to see how these permissions will work and how much control the user has. What could be a privacy nightmare is if Facebook is left to determine when and what permissions to grant based on the chatbots鈥� request.鈥�
For its part, Facebook says that it has taken privacy concerns about chatbots into account with its Messenger platform.
鈥淎s with all things, people鈥檚 privacy is one of the most important factors we take into consideration when developing new products,鈥� said a Facebook spokesperson. 鈥淏ots for Messenger are no exception. We have an听 in place for the beta program to prevent sub-par bots from reaching people, and we also have in place that govern what information bots have access to.鈥�
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