Archive · 26 Jul 2026
Chatbots Infer Personal Details from User Interactions
Chatbots like ChatGPT and Gemini can infer personal details about users from their interactions.
For example, they can guess a user's income level based on the type of car they own and their employment of a nanny.
They can also infer health issues from questions about remedies for specific ailments.
Users can try specific prompts to see what the chatbots have inferred about them.
While this can be unsettling, it also highlights the chatbots' ability to provide personalized responses.
Users concerned about privacy can opt out of data sharing in the settings.
Chatbots infer personal details like income level, health issues, and psychological profile from user interactions.
Users can prompt chatbots to reveal inferred information, sometimes uncovering surprising insights.
Chatbots use past conversations to provide more customized and personalized responses.
Privacy concerns arise from the extent of data inference without explicit user consent.
Users can opt out of data sharing in the settings of ChatGPT and Gemini.
- Who
- Users of chatbots like ChatGPT and Gemini
- What
- Chatbots infer personal details from user interactions
- When
- Ongoing as users interact with chatbots
- Where
- Globally, where chatbots are used
- Why
- To provide more customized and personalized responses
User Privacy Concerns
AI Customization Benefits
Data Collection
User Privacy Concerns
Chatbots collect and infer personal data without explicit consent, raising privacy concerns.
AI Customization Benefits
AI customization improves user experience by tailoring responses to individual needs.
Transparency
User Privacy Concerns
Users are often unaware of the extent of data inference by chatbots.
AI Customization Benefits
AI companies argue that users benefit from more personalized and accurate responses.
- Chatbot Models Tested
- Gemini, ChatGPT
- Key Inferences Made
- Income level, health issues, psychological profile, age range, location
- User Control Options
- Opt-out settings available in ChatGPT and Gemini
- Researcher Comment
- Margaret Mitchell, AI researcher at Hugging Face
- Company Responses
- Google and OpenAI have different privacy control settings