People commonly disclose all kinds of personal data to AI chatbots, including the highly inadvisable practice of asking them for health advice. In addition to the grave medical dangers of obtaining inaccurate advice, users are also running significant privacy risks.

Most AI chatbots have terms and conditions that allow any of your conversations with them to be used as training data, and often app terms that allow data to be collated and sold. Democrats now propose to update a privacy law to prevent the sale of health data …

The Verge reports that two members of Congress are now planning to introduce legal protections to ban the sale of health data collected in AI chatbot sessions.

In the coming weeks, Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Representative Mary Gay Scanlon (D-PA) are planning to debut a new version of the Health and Location Data Protection Act […] expanded to ban other companies from selling such data to brokers, and to specifically cover data entered into AI systems.

As the piece notes, this is particularly timely when AI companies are actively encouraging users to upload health data.

In January, Elon Musk publicly called for people to upload their medical records, like MRI scans, to Grok, xAI’s chatbot. That same month, OpenAI introduced ChatGPT Health, a sandboxed tab within ChatGPT that it deemed more secure, and encouraged users to upload their medical records and other sensitive information […] Anthropic quickly followed up with Claude for Healthcare, a “HIPAA-ready” tool for individuals, health providers, and hospitals.

I’ve argued countless times that the US needs a federal privacy law with the breadth and bite of the EU’s GDPR. Piecemeal legislation like this is better than nothing, but will always leave the law lagging behind technology.

Given the unreliability of generative AI, it would be exceedingly foolish to take any health advice from a chatbot. Don’t do it. But if you want to have other sensitive discussions with a chatbot, Siri would be the way to go. Both the existing Siri handoff to ChatGPT and the new Siri AI use of Google Gemini models are subject to strict Apple privacy requirements that forbid the collection of user data.

• Official Apple Store on Amazon
• Discounted AirPods Pro 3
• Wireless CarPlay adapter
• AirTag holders and accessories
• Mac Pro-style Mac mini casing
• NordVPN – privacy-first VPN with no logs and independent audits to verify

Photo by julien Tromeur on Unsplash