Signal’s Meredith Whittaker wants you to remember that AI chatbots ‘are not your friends’
Signal President Meredith Whittaker warns that AI chatbots are not sentient beings and should not be treated as friends. She criticizes Microsoft's plan to let Copilot handle Christmas shopping, calling it a backdoor in Signal’s context.
In a Bloomberg interview, Signal President Meredith Whittaker was asked about the privacy implications of chatbots like ChatGPT and Claude. She responded, “These are not your friends. These are not conscious beings. These are not sentient interlocutors.” While she admitted using AI tools occasionally for formatting, she stressed that she does not ask them questions, as she values independent thinking and writing.
Whittaker also took issue with Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman’s prediction that users could let Microsoft Copilot handle all their Christmas shopping this year. She argued that such a scenario would require Copilot to eavesdrop on family group chats to determine gift preferences, granting it access to credit cards, browsers, Signal messages, the ability to message siblings on her behalf, home addresses, and calendars.
“What you’ve just described is a system with very pervasive access across multiple applications and services,” Whittaker said. “In the context of Signal, it would constitute a kind of a backdoor.”
