Overview
- An IMDEA Networks Institute analysis published Wednesday examined nine AI chat services and found every service included at least one external advertising or tracking provider.
- The researchers identified 44 distinct third-party providers and found that six of nine web services and three of eight Android apps transmitted conversation URLs, titles, inputs or screenshots to external companies.
- The study singled out Grok and Perplexity for exposing unprotected conversation links that allowed trackers like Meta Pixel to access previews, and it found Grok’s Open-Graph metadata contained verbatim message text that TikTok captured.
- Refusing non-essential cookies did not always stop data flows because cookies, hashed email addresses and other persistent identifiers were still sent in some cases and can enable cross-site linkage or re-identification.
- The investigators stressed that risk varies by provider, advised against entering highly sensitive personal, health or work information into chatbots, and said the findings could prompt further scrutiny and fixes by regulators and companies.