Signal President Meredith Whittaker just delivered a blunt message: AI chatbots are not your friends.
In a recent Bloomberg interview, Whittaker was direct about the problem with systems like ChatGPT and Claude. "These are not your friends. These are not conscious beings. These are not sentient interlocutors," she said.
The Signal executive uses AI tools occasionally—"to format a document here and there"—but draws a firm line around her own work. "I don't ask them questions," she said. "I'm very serious about my thinking and writing, and I don't want the process of working through an idea to be foreclosed or eclipsed by the response of a system that's averaging what's already out there."
Whittaker then took direct aim at Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman's proposal that users could let Microsoft Copilot handle their Christmas shopping. She was skeptical.
"In order to do that, you'd be giving it access to my credit card, my browser, my Signal, the ability to message my siblings on my behalf, my home address [and] my calendar," Whittaker explained, walking through the scenario step by step.
She continued: "What you've just described is a system with very pervasive access across multiple applications and services. In the context of Signal, it would constitute a kind of a backdoor."
Allowing AI to become a personal shopping assistant is not convenience. It grants broad access to sensitive data across multiple services.
For anyone who has chatted with ChatGPT as if speaking to a person, Whittaker's warning is worth taking seriously. These systems are tools, not confidants.
