{"id":247459,"date":"2026-06-20T20:32:29","date_gmt":"2026-06-20T20:32:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/2026\/06\/20\/signals-meredith-whittaker-wants-you-to-remember-that-ai-chatbots-are-not-your-friends-techcrunch\/"},"modified":"2026-06-20T20:32:29","modified_gmt":"2026-06-20T20:32:29","slug":"signals-meredith-whittaker-wants-you-to-remember-that-ai-chatbots-are-not-your-friends-techcrunch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/2026\/06\/20\/signals-meredith-whittaker-wants-you-to-remember-that-ai-chatbots-are-not-your-friends-techcrunch\/","title":{"rendered":"Signal\u2019s Meredith Whittaker wants you to remember that AI chatbots \u2018are not your friends\u2019 | TechCrunch"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p id=\"speakable-summary\" class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Asked about the privacy implications of chatbots like ChatGPT and Claude, Signal President Meredith Whittaker answered, \u201cThese are not your friends. These are not conscious beings. These are not sentient interlocutors.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Whittaker made those comments in <a rel=\"nofollow noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/features\/2026-meredith-whittaker-weekend-interview\/\" target=\"_blank\">a broader interview with Bloomberg<\/a> about policy, privacy, and Signal. She acknowledged that she uses AI tools \u201cto format a document here and there,\u201d but insisted, \u201cI don\u2019t ask them questions. I\u2019m very serious about my thinking and writing, and I don\u2019t want the process of working through an idea [\u2026] to be foreclosed or eclipsed by the response of a system that\u2019s averaging what\u2019s already out there.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">As for Microsoft AI CEO <a rel=\"nofollow noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/features\/2025-mustafa-suleyman-weekend-interview\/\" target=\"_blank\">Mustafa Suleyman\u2019s prediction<\/a> that users could let Microsoft Copilot handle all their Christmas shopping this year, Whittaker argued this scenario \u2014 where Copilot is eavesdropping on the family group chat to determine who wants want \u2014 means giving it \u201caccess to my credit card, my browser, my Signal, the ability to message my siblings on my behalf, my home address [and] my calendar.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cWhat you\u2019ve just described is a system with very pervasive access across multiple applications and services,\u201d Whittaker said. \u201cIn the context of Signal, it would constitute a kind of a backdoor.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2026\/06\/20\/signals-meredith-whittaker-wants-you-to-remember-that-ai-chatbots-are-not-your-friends\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Asked about the privacy implications of chatbots like ChatGPT and Claude, Signal President Meredith Whittaker answered, \u201cThese are not your friends. These are not conscious beings. These are not sentient interlocutors.\u201d Whittaker made those comments in a broader interview with Bloomberg about policy, privacy, and Signal. She acknowledged that she uses AI tools \u201cto format [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":247460,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-247459","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tech"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247459","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=247459"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247459\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/247460"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=247459"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=247459"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=247459"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}