AI chatbots are becoming increasingly intimate spaces, with people using them for companionship, therapy and as a helpful personal assistant.
While our interactions with chatbots like ChatGPT and Copilot get more personal, we're also seeing logs and transcripts of these interactions increasingly find their way to the public - via FOI requests, court orders and security and privacy breaches.
We explore the convergence of these opposing trends.
Links:
Article about national security chief using Copilot (Crikey - PAYWALL) https://www.crikey.com.au/2025/11/12/australia-national-security-chief-ai-speech-writing/
Article about UK tech minister using ChatGPT for policy advice (New Scientist) https://www.newscientist.com/article/2472068-revealed-how-the-uk-tech-secretary-uses-chatgpt-for-po…
Article about California court order ChatGPT logs discoverable (AI Buzz) https://www.ai-buzz.com/court-rules-chatgpt-history-is-discoverable-evidence-in-lawsuits
Article about Grok chats exposed in Google search results (BBC) https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cdrkmk00jy0o
Article about Meta leaking chatbot prompts (Toms Guide) https://www.tomsguide.com/computing/online-security/meta-ai-was-leaking-chatbot-prompts-and-answers…
OpenAI v New York Times https://openai.com/index/fighting-nyt-user-privacy-invasion/
NSW Government advisory on AI and recordkeeping https://www.nsw.gov.au/nsw-government/recordkeeping/create-and-capture/ai-and-recordkeeping
Credits:
Editing and post-production by Martin Franklin (East Coast Studio) www.eastcoaststudio.com.au
Music by Bensound.com