Meta’s AI social feed is a privacy disaster waiting to happen

Since ChatGPT sparked the generative AI revolution in November 2022, interacting with AI has felt like using a digital confession booth—private, intimate, and shielded from public view (unless you choose to share).

That’s about to change dramatically with Meta’s rollout of social features in its stand-alone AI app, released last week. Those quiet queries—“What’s this embarrassing rash?” or “How can I tell my wife I don’t love her anymore?”—could soon be visible to anyone scrolling through the app’s Discover tab. If society is still grappling with how to navigate artificial intelligence, Meta’s changes risk throwing even more confusion into the mix.

For tech-savvy users, the shift from private to public might be manageable—they’ll at least be aware it’s happening. But most people aren’t monitoring every policy tweak from Big Tech, and may have no idea that what once felt like a private conversation with AI could now become public fodder, ripe for ridicule. (Meta did not respond to Fast Company’s request for comment.)

AI has quickly become a hybrid of search engine and digital confidant. Remember the embarrassment of accidentally posting a private message publicly? Now imagine that happening on a massive scale, as millions unknowingly expose deeply personal questions and experiences.

This isn’t a hypothetical concern. Posts from Meta AI users are already surfacing in the app’s social feed, including verbal queries asked via voice mode, like one user’s question about folic acid, which also revealed her age and postmenopausal status. The Discover feed is shaping up to be a slow-motion privacy disaster, as users unintentionally share raw, unfiltered pieces of their lives—far from the curated, polished image we’ve grown used to displaying on social media.

Meta said in a press release that its AI app aims to “connect you with the people and things you care about,” and calls the Discover feed “a place to share and explore how others are using AI.” While the company insists that “nothing is shared unless you choose to post it,” the app nonetheless nudges people to share—and overshare—whether they fully realize it or not.