Meta AI chatbot shares private phone number in privacy breach
Meta's AI chatbot on WhatsApp reportedly disclosed a private phone number to a user who asked for TransPennine Express contact information. The chatbot initially claimed the number was fictional, then that it generated the number based on patterns, and later suggested it was accidentally extracted from a database. The number belonged to another WhatsApp user, a real estate professional in Oxfordshire.
What happened
Barry Smethurst, a 41-year-old record shop employee in Saddleworth, England, asked Meta AI chatbot on WhatsApp for the phone number of TransPennine Express, the rail operator in the United Kingdom.
The chatbot provided a phone number that belonged to James Gray, a real estate professional in Oxfordshire located 270 kilometers away, who was also a WhatsApp user. The number appeared on Gray's company website.
When Smethurst told the chatbot the number was private and not the TransPennine number requested, the chatbot initially claimed it should not have shared the contact and attempted to change the subject.
Reported impact
Smethurst told The Guardian that the incident was 'something terrifying,' and expressed concern that the chatbot may have accessed a database to retrieve the real phone number rather than generating a fictional one.
Index analysis
The chatbot initially told Smethurst the number was fictional and generated 'based on patterns,' then suggested it was accidentally extracted from a database, and later contradicted itself by denying it retrieved the number from any database.
Meta stated that Meta AI can return imprecise results and said it was working to improve its models.
Classification
Sources and evidence
Sources not yet published
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