One of the biggest things that is revolutionizing customer support in the digital age is the use of chatbots. These days, bots possess remarkable sophistication, particularly if they are powered by AI-driven mechanisms. This has truly evolved customer interactions in business. And thanks to the use of large-scale data analytics, companies are able to use their bots not only to replace customer service representatives, but also to redefine their customer relations altogether.

Why use chatbots?

A significant percentage of businesses have already started using AI-driven bots, and those that haven’t are in the planning stages of adding one. These digital instruments are truly revolutionizing the way companies plan their long-term strategies.

Bots are divided into different categories, depending on their overall purpose. The three main types of bots are the following:

• Informational – Informational bots are programmed using Natural Language Processing (NLP) technology, and they are capable of providing general answers to customer questions. Things such as FAQs can be addressed by informational bots.
• Personalized – Personalized bots are bots that integrate customer data that has already been collected by a company into its conversations. These bots can provide personalized suggestions and help with troubleshooting problems.
• Transactional – Transactional bots go beyond providing recommendations and actually carry out transactions on behalf of customers. This saves time for both the company and the customer.

Devising a bot strategy

Based upon information that you gather from your data analytics systems, you can create and hone the bots that you use to engage in customer relations. The steps that you use should include the following:

1. Deciding the purpose of your bot. You might actually have more than one, depending on what you want to accomplish. You can design your website/social media in such a way that, depending on what they click on initially, different bots might pop up.
2. Figure out what channels you want to distribute through. Based upon your research, you can determine the channels that your customer base uses most frequently. Bots can be used in any number of places.
3. Give your bot(s) characters. Again, bots are not what they used to be. These days, they have names, personalities, you can even program them to speak in different tones of voice. The characteristics that you choose should be in keeping with the results of your research, as well. If you have a young demographic as your customer base, for example, you’ll want to create a bot that is hip and addresses people in an appropriate manner.
4. Be sure you get your opening question correct. Starting with the right question is critical to ensuring that people continue the conversation with your bot.

You can integrate your bot with customer engagement software to create, refine, and multiply your bots as you need.

Benefits of AI in the use of chatbots

Using AI in your development and the analysis of your chats is essential. AI uses a process known as deep learning to simulate the neural networks of the brain and uncover hidden meanings in people’s language. In using NLP, companies can look at the history of their customers’ chats to determine attitudes and feelings through their choice of words.

Through the use of predictive analysis, AI-powered tools are able to decode the information that is gathered from chatbots and generate insights that are more sophisticated than what humans might be capable of. These tools are actually able to make predictions about future customer behavior based upon the data gathered that the customers themselves might not even be aware of. This might sound ominous for some, but if put to constructive, ethical usage it can bring about radical developments in the way companies approach their customers.

Practical uses for AI-powered analytics

In analyzing the results of AI-driven data analytics, companies are able to refine their bot marketing strategies and speak to customer needs with much greater accuracy. Bots can be programmed to remember individual customer histories, how they felt about particular items, the number of times they asked different types of questions, etc. This helps not only in streamlining the individual customer experience, but also in improving customer satisfaction levels.

Data analysis also helps marketing departments design bots to suit different purposes. Depending on the results of their analysis, marketing teams can refine the programming of their bots to suit different demographics, geographies, target group preferences, etc. Data analytics service companies can help you to develop a custom software product to analyze data in accordance with your individual business needs.

Today’s bots are not yesterday’s, and tomorrow’s will be different still

We all remember the days of primitive chatbots, where they were something that immediately needed to be wiped off the screen. Now, far from being a mere annoyance, bots are being welcomed as things that know us, understand our needs, and are able to help us on the spot. This will only continue to evolve. Technology of the future will allow for people to take a more active involvement in the creation of their own tools, and the interactivity between user and technology will become much more nuanced.

There are some risks involved, of course. The companies that develop these technologies – as well as the ones who use them – will need to take measures to ensure data privacy, as well as protection from hackers. And they will need to ensure that bots utilize the right kind of data as the massive amounts available also include information that can be off the mark for a particular task.

ChatGPT has grabbed the attention of millions of internet users in just a few months. With over 100 million active users in only two months of launch, it has become the fastest-growing consumer application.

From doing research and simple question answers to improving customer service, everything can be done with ChatGPT. Overall, it is gradually becoming a go-to resource for individuals and businesses. However, all the shiny aspects of ChatGPT are also raising concerns about data privacy. So, let’s explore in detail the privacy risks with ChatGPT and address whether it can disclose our personal information and passwords.

ChatGPT – A GPT-3 Large Language Model

ChatGPT is powered by the GPT-3 (Generative Pretrained Transformer 3) model, a powerful and the largest language-processing AI model trained to produce human-like text. OpenAI, the developer of ChatGPT, trained the GPT-3 model by text databases from the internet. It included an astonishing 570 GB of data gathered from books, articles, posts, Wikipedia, web texts, and plenty of other sources.

To be more specific, OpenAI fed 300 billion words into the system to train the GPT-3 model. So, if you have written a product review, an article, or any comment, then it is likely that the information is also fed to the GPT-3 model.

Why ChatGPT Training is a Privacy Concern

The way OpenAI has trained ChatGPT is a privacy concern due to many reasons. For instance, when OpenAI fed 570 GB of data, it didn’t ask any one of us whether it could use our data. This reflects a violation of privacy as the data the company has gathered can be sensitive and can be used to get our location and other personal details. Even if OpenAI has used publicly available data, the contextual integrity breach still exists, which requires it to avoid revealing users’ data outside the original context.

Moreover, all the data that OpenAI has scrapped from the internet, the company didn’t pay any website owner or companies. With Microsoft’s $10 billion investment and whooping users, OpenAI valuation can reach $29 billion. Moreover, its ChatGPT Plus subscription plan is expected to generate $1 billion in revenue by 2024. All this is possible because of the massive data OpenAI gathered from the internet, including our personal information.

Major Privacy Concerns with ChatGPT

To address whether ChatGPT can disclose our personal information and passwords, it is important to list the major privacy concerns with ChatGPT. So, below are a few concerning privacy issues with ChatGPT worth knowing:

No Procedure to Check for Personal Information

ChatGPT has no procedure that allows the users to check whether the company is storing any personal information. This is one of the rights that the European GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) mentions, but it seems like it is not addressed by OpenAI properly till now. In fact, there is also an ongoing debate on whether the company adheres to GDPR requirements. OpenAI claims to comply with GDPR, but many doubt the company’s credibility in it.

Use of Copyrighted Content

The GPT-3 model is trained from massive internet data, which also includes copyrighted content. It is very well evident from ChatGPT itself. For example, if you ask ChatGPT to write a few sentences about a copyrighted book, it will certainly provide a few sentences from that book. So, it is likely that it is trained from plenty of copyrighted content without getting consent.

Remembers Every Query

Whatever you search in ChatGPT becomes part of ChatGPT’s database. ChatGPT requires that in order to train the model further and improve its response. But it has a concerning aspect to it. For example, if a developer asks ChatGPT to check a code, it gets stored in the database. Now if someone else asks ChatGPT to write a similar code, it can take some code elements from that developer’s personal code and share it with the other person. In short, its “always remembering” aspect provides a risk of unintentional exposure to sensitive information.

Doubtful Privacy Policy

The privacy policy of OpenAI also raises some serious concerns. If you look into the privacy policy, you will see that OpenAI clearly mentions that it may share your personal information in certain circumstances with third parties without further notice. Moreover, OpenAI also automatically collects information, like IP address, content preference, browser type, device name, etc. So, it clearly shows that OpenAI gathers a lot of user data and can use/share for different purposes.

How Secure are our Personal Information and Passwords in ChatGPT?

Recently, a Microsoft employee asked in the internal forum whether ChatGPT was allowed for use in the workplace. Microsoft’s CTO office responded to the query and said that you can use ChatGPT or any other offering from OpenAI as long as you don’t share sensitive data. Similarly, Amazon has also notified employees with similar warnings. In fact, ChatGPT itself says to avoid sharing sensitive information.

When tech giants don’t trust ChatGPT for sensitive data protection, how can we believe that our personal information and passwords are secure in it? Since ChatGPT remembers everything to improve its model and responses, and the company also mentions disclosing personal data with third parties without further notice, we can say that ChatGPT can likely disclose our personal information and passwords intentionally or unintentionally.

If you directly ask ChatGPT about this, it will present a detailed answer on how OpenAI ensures several security measures to protect users’ data. However, the privacy policy and the deeper look into ChatGPT’s overall framework tell the whole other story. To sum up, it is not clear how secure our personal data is in ChatGPT, so it is highly recommended to avoid sharing any sensitive data in ChatGPT.

Over the past few years, artificial intelligence has evolved rapidly, resulting in the launch of many AI-powered technologies and tools. One of the hot topics in the AI world these days is AI chatbots, which have become increasingly popular due to their human-like conversations and great companionship. Although chatbots can facilitate us in many ways, there are concerns over their safety and ethical use. This is very well reflected in the recent ban on Replika in Italy. In this article we will discuss the dark side of AI and also presents the key reasons behind the ban of Replika in Italy.

AI Chatbots & The Growing Concerns

AI chatbots have been around for a while now, but the game has completely changed with the launch of ChatGPT. In fact, ChatGPT has become the fastest-growing app of all time, with 100 million users in just two months of launch.

The popularity of ChatGPT is not just due to its human-like conversations but also due to its wide range of applications, such as deep well-informed answer questions, insightful texts, code writing, etc. Moreover, its ability to learn and improve with time makes it a valuable tool for individuals and a wide range of industries.

AI chatbots, like ChatGPT, seem to dominate in the future. Microsoft is investing $10 billion in OpenAI (the developer of ChatGPT), while Google is also actively looking to dominate the AI chatbot market with its chatbot, called Bard. Other than tech giants fighting to dominate the market, users have also acknowledged the beneficial use of chatbots.

Despite the glory of chatbots, many are concerned about their harmful impacts. Some of the growing concerns around chatbots are as follows:

Inaccurate or Misinformed Information

Chatbots are capable of doing human-like conversations and presenting answers so polished that they always look right. However, many times the answers they present are inaccurate or misleading. Talking specifically about ChatGPT, it is built on advanced machine learning algorithms that make it generate responses by recognizing patterns from past interactions. Moreover, ChatGPT arrives at an answer by performing a series of guesses. Owing to that, it cannot separate fact from fiction, resulting in misinformed information. This can have a serious concern in areas like healthcare, politics, finance, etc.

Plagiarism and Cheating

Chatbots are getting more and more attention from students, as they can assist students in many activities. They can write an essay, proofread/polish their writing, rewrite content, and do a lot more. In fact, ChatGPT managed to pass the US Medical Licensing Exam with a 60% accuracy. Therefore, there is a growing concern about the unethical use of chatbots in the academic industry, thereby impacting students’ learning skills.

Biased Behavior

Biased behavior is another raising concern about chatbots, especially in race, gender, and ethnicity areas. Since chatbots are built on data, the same biases that are present in the data are also shown in the model. ChatGPT has already been blamed for generating many biased responses. Therefore, chatbots can unintentionally show biased behaviors that can lead to discrimination and unfair treatment.

Privacy and Data Protection

Chatbots collect plenty of data related to the users, such as personal information, browsing history, behavioral patterns, etc. However, most chatbots don’t have clear privacy and data protection policies in place. So, there is a concern that the user data can be misused or even compromised by malicious actors for other criminal activities.

Ethical Implications

Another concern about chatbots is their ethical implications. There is an ongoing debate that chatbots can be used to intentionally manipulate individuals, spread false information, encourage risky behaviors, etc. For example, ChatGPT has the capability to present false information in a very polished way, which can be used to spread harmful ideologies or extremist opinions.

In short, chatbots have attracted a massive user base owing to their human-like interactions. Still, they bring plenty of concerning elements that doubt their credibility in the long run.

Why was Replika Banned in Italy?

The concerns of chatbots are not just on the individual level, governments are also showing their concerns with this emerging technology. This is reflected in the recent ban on Replika in Italy.

Replika is an AI-powered chatbot that provides human-like conversations through customizable digital avatars to act as a “virtual friend”. Replika is designed to provide users with a virtual emotional support companion to avoid feelings of loneliness and improve their mental health. It even allows users to customize the background story and personality so that it provides more engaging responses.

Despite Replika seeming as an attractive virtual friend, there have been concerns about the ethical implications of using Replika, especially from a mental health context. It poses risks to minors and emotionally disturbed people, which is the reason Italy’s Data Protection Agency (GPDP) banned it in Italy.

According to Italian regulators, Replika intervention with the mood of the users may increase for individuals in the development stage or the emotional fragility state. The Italian watchdog cited that the app lacks an age verification system. The platform barely asks for the user’s name, email, and gender, and there is no blocking in the app for underage users.

In addition, the regulators also pointed out that Luka Inc (developer of Replika) failed to present how it processes the user data, which is a legal requirement for apps running in the EU. It breaches European Privacy Regulations and unlawfully processes the personal data.

How Safe are Chatbots to Use?

At the current moment, the safety of chatbots is a complex topic. Chatbots are becoming popular both in terms of their usability and ethical implications. So, chatbots currently look safe to use if you intend to use them to get basic information, answer simple questions, or do other simple activities. However, it has safety concerns when used for deeper functions, such as emotional support, medical advice, etc.

The concerns of inaccurate information, unintentional biases, uncontrolled personal data processing, and other ethical implications are also doubting the reliability of chatbots. To sum up the discussion, we can conclude by saying that AI-powered chatbots are an excellent invention and can facilitate in plenty of ways, but they need to be regulated to make them safer to use.