Your AI conversations are a secret new treasure trove for marketers
Profound is a startup that promises to help companies understand how they appear in AI responses to customer queries. But one expert in the field thinks the AI analytics startup has been sucking up information on users’ AI conversations without proper consent.
Lee S Dryburgh, an expert in AI visibility for consumer health and longevity brands, told The Register that he believes Profound has been relying on data gathered via browser extensions that capture people’s conversations with chatbots.
“Users think they’re getting a free VPN or SEO widget; in reality, their most private queries — health scares, finances, identity crises — are being slurped, anonymized, and resold,” Dryburgh explained in an email. “Onavo and Jumpshot déjà vu, only worse: this time it’s your inner dialogue.”
Related Knowledge Center: Digital privacy and data security
If you’re online, you’re generating a constant stream of information about yourself — sometimes voluntarily, sometimes unwittingly — that is assembled and used to craft your online experience. And generate wealth for data brokers. Meanwhile, designers and managers of the digital infrastructure on which the world depends are engaged in a never-ending effort to thwart attempts, by both criminal enterprises and state actors, to exploit vulnerabilities in those systems.
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