How will the rise of AI across the internet, but especially on our phones, affect data privacy? That's the question posed in a recent piece by the New York Times.

As the piece details: "In this new paradigm, your Windows computer will take a screenshot of everything you do every few seconds. An iPhone will stitch together information across many apps you use. And an Android phone can listen to a call in real time to alert you to a scam."

But all these new features require one thing—constant access to all your private data.

"The default should be that our data is not collected unless we affirmatively ask for it to be collected," Katharine Miller of Stanford's Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence recently wrote. "There have been a few movements and tech solutions in that direction." To that, she points out the California Privacy Protection Act (CPPA) and Apple's App Tracking Transparency (ATT) tool.

The most pressing question regarding private data—especially the sensitive photos/videos, text messages, and other personal data—is whether the it will go to the cloud, and who will have access to it.

"Apple’s commitment to purging user data from its servers sets it apart from other companies that hold on to data," says the New Yorkt Times. "But Apple has been unclear about which new Siri requests could be sent to the company’s servers, said Matthew Green, a security researcher and an associate professor of computer science at Johns Hopkins University, who was briefed by Apple on its new technology. Anything that leaves your device is inherently less secure, he said."

Microsoft has been less clear about how its AI monitoring of your Windows activity will be kept secure. Push-back to this has caused the rollout of the Recall feature to be delayed.

As for Google, Suzanne Frey, who oversees trust and privacy for the tech giant, told the Times, "our privacy-protecting approach applies to our A.I. features, no matter if they are powered on-device or in the cloud."

The comment didn't go over so well for Green: "I don’t like the idea that my very personal photos and very personal searches are going out to a cloud that isn’t under my control."

Verdict

Not only is AI itself uncharted waters, but every new application of the technology brings up new questions about data, IP, and more. By bringing AI tools to users' phones, the tech giants will be dealing with ever more intimate privacy concerns by the public.