Asked in regards to the privacy implications of chatbots like ChatGPT and Claude, Signal President Meredith Whittaker answered, “These will not be your mates. These will not be conscious beings. These will not be sentient interlocutors.”
Whittaker made those comments in a broader interview with Bloomberg about policy, privacy, and Signal. She acknowledged that she uses AI tools “to format a document here and there,” but insisted, “I don’t ask them questions. I’m very serious about my pondering and writing, and I don’t want the technique of working through an idea […] to be foreclosed or eclipsed by the response of a system that’s averaging what’s already on the market.”
As for Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman’s prediction that users could let Microsoft Copilot handle all their Christmas shopping this yr, Whittaker argued this scenario — where Copilot is eavesdropping on the family group chat to find out who wants want — means giving it “access to my bank card, my browser, my Signal, the flexibility 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 said. “Within the context of Signal, it might constitute a type of a backdoor.”