good thing no one in my circle uses sms anymore. a lot of them still use whatsapp, but i’ve convinced my immediate family to use signal at least.
It really should be up to the user if they want to use AI for wiping their butt, not up to big tech ffs.
it’s up to the company running the service and the customer. the user is not the customer.
then what is the user if not the costumer of the company/consumer of the service?
The valuable commodity is data. Think of it like eggs. The users are the chickens. Google runs the poultry farm.
Report this post. It does not belong here. We should not be part of this spread of the misinformation. Bard is NOT an information source.
The post title should read “Forbes uses AI to write B.S articles to scare people and get clicks”.
Public service announcement: this article seems to be written like their only source was asking Bard some questions. If you trust Bard enough to tell you Google’s plans, you may as well be asking it when the second coming is happening, because it’ll be just as confident when it hallucinates that answer too.
As soon as someone makes an SMS app that can filter the 5 spam texts I get every day, I’ll delete my Google account.
If you don’t share your number and don’t give any indication you are a person they will go away.
Its been a long time since I received spam.
You don’t have to share your number to get spam messages - I get weekly spam texts for “Susan” (not my name), which I never interact with but have been coming from random numbers for years.
Once your # is on a list, whether you put it there or not, it never leaves.
I’m the only one who has ever had this phone no., but if I were to swap now, 99% chance I’d get a reused number, which would probably come already loaded on a million different spam lists. There’s no winning.
This is 1000% not true.
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They don’t care if you don’t answer. It costs them $0 to text you.
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My profession makes me a target for a wide variety of advertising and my phone number is required by law to be listed publicly.
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I already don’t. Mostly because Google Messages filters them in a way that I never even see them unless I’m actively looking. It was only when I got an iPhone that I realized exactly how horrific it is.
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I’ll just continue to use Textra…
Still no RCS support though, yeah? Google seems to be keeping it hostage
Unbelievable. If you’re not running a custom ROM, get Canta set up and strip out as much Google malware as you can because this is only gonna get worse.
So if an Android user texts with an iPhone user, Bard has data on both users. Great. /s
I assume using a third party messager app (qksms for example) solves this privacy problem?
Yeah, this is specific to the Google Messages app. For now, anyway.
Kinda, but they’re still reading the messages you send to users who are using it
I think everything on a google phone goes to google.
“Start”
This alone would make me more likely to switch back to iPhone, as much as I hate the walled garden. “Just switch to a private messenger app” doesn’t really work when no one else uses them. I’ve even gotten all of my family to try Signal, but they dropped it in favor of going back to imessage. It’s extremely frustrating, far from ideal, but it is what it is.
Google reading my messages at all, even if it’s “oPt OuT”, is a complete non starter.
Use another messager app through FDroid. Literally, an app that handles your texts. You can change that.
even signal can do sms messaging from what i understand
I think Matrix can iirc.
Hol’ up matrix can sms?
They dropped support for it. Not sure why. It used to be supported.
There are three big reasons why we’re removing SMS support for the Android app now: prioritizing security and privacy, ensuring people aren’t hit with unexpected messaging bills, and creating a clear and intelligible user experience for anyone sending messages on Signal.
To me, all of those reasons are BS and easily gotten around. “Unexpected messaging bills?” Have a popup that warns you that this user doesn’t have an account and is about to send a SMS, potentially incurring a cost, as an example.
They just didn’t want to maintain the code and chased some users away. https://www.signal.org/blog/sms-removal-android/
They dropped it because people assumed it was secure just because they used signal, and is never secure and you can assume pretty much anyone could be reading your texts wanyway.
Thank you for this! Didn’t know it was a thing, I’ll do that.
Why can’t you use a mix if SMS and Simplex chat or signal/molly? I guess I don’t understand the love of imessage
Also you don’t need google to use android
Having a unified app that supports your message protocol with SMS fallback is legitimately great. I’m still bitter signal canned that feature.
But it isn’t that big of a deal to just use two apps. It’s what I’ve had to do for a while now. Anyone I actually know goes into signal, and I use SMS for my boss, my dad, and various companies.
Yeah let’s use End to end encrypted, open source messaging apps like Signal please.
This new Google thing probably applies to their own proprietary messaging apps like Android messages, Hangouts and Gmail. Tbh, I’m more surprised they weren’t already doing this. Fuck SMS, fuck RCS. E2EE private FOSS messaging standards for me please.
That webpage has an uncrossable pop-up that shows me the button to save the article. It covers up the majority of the first paragraph.
https://gitlab.com/magnolia1234/bypass-paywalls-firefox-clean/
Forgive formatting…
Google has just unveiled a game-changing AI upgrade for Android. But it has a darker side. Google’s AI will start to read and analyze your private messages, going back forever. So what does this mean for you, how do you maintain your privacy, and when does it begin.
Smartphone privacy is about to change forever
Google’s AI to begin analyzing private messages on Android smartphonesgetty
There’s understandable excitement that Google is bringing Bard to Messages. A readymade ChatGPT-like UI for a readymade user base of hundreds of millions. “It’s an AI assistant,” says Bard, “that can improve your messaging experience… from facilitating communication to enhancing creativity and providing information… it will be your personal AI assistant within your messaging app.”
But Bard will also analyze the private content of messages “to understand the context of your conversations, your tone, and your interests.” It will analyze the sentiment of your messages, “to tailor its responses to your mood and vibe.” And it will “analyze your message history with different contacts to understand your relationship dynamics… to personalize responses based on who you’re talking to.”
And so here comes the next privacy battlefield for smartphone owners still coming to terms with app permissions, privacy labels and tracking transparency, and with all those voice AI assistant eavesdropping scandals still fresh in the memory. Google’s challenge will be convincing users that this doesn’t open the door to the same kind of privacy nightmares we’ve seen before, where user content and AI platforms meet.
There will be another, less contentious privacy issue with your Messages requests to Bard. These will be sent to the cloud for processing, used for training and maybe seen by humans—albeit anonymized. This data will be stored for 18-months, and will persist for a few days even if you disable the AI, albeit manual deletion is available. MORE FOR YOU Trustworthy AI: String Of AI Fails Show Self-Regulation Doesn’t Work The Best Record Players For Beginners To Spin Vinyl Music The Technological Marvel Behind A Real Bug s Life MORE FROM FORBESGoogle Issues New Incognito Guidance For Chrome Users By Zak Doffman
Such requests fall outside Google Messages newly default end-to-end encryption—you’re literally messaging Google itself. While this is non-contentious, it’s worth bearing in mind. Just as with all generative AI chatbots, including ChatGPT, you need to assume anything you ask is non-private and could come back to haunt you.
But message analysis is different. This is content that does (now) fall inside that end-to-end encryption shield, in a world where such private messaging is the new normal. Here the push should be for on-device AI analysis, with data never leaving your phone, rather than content uploaded to the cloud, where more processing can be put to work.
This is where the Android Vs iPhone battlefield may well come into play. Historically, Apple has been much stronger when it comes to on-device analysis than Google, which has historically defaulted to the cloud to analyze user content.
Unsurprisingly, Apple’s own moves to bring generative AI to iPhone users will take that approach—on-device analysis as the default when it comes to user content, albeit with a carve-out for its request architecture. And there’s building excitement as to what might be on offer with this fall’s iOS 18.
“Apple is quietly increasing its capabilities,” The FT reported this week, “to bring AI to its next generation of iPhones… Apple’s goal appears to be operating generative AI through mobile devices, to allow AI chatbots and apps to run on the phone’s own hardware and software rather than be powered by cloud services in data centres.”
For its part, Bard says that “Google has assured that all Bard analysis would happen on your device, meaning your messages wouldn’t be sent to any servers. Additionally, you would have complete control over what data Bard analyzes and how it uses it.”
You will have to judge whether this gives you comfort enough to let Bard loose on your private content. A word of caution. There’s a difference between what can’t be done, such as breaching end-to-end encryption, and what isn’t being done, such as policies as to where content analysis takes place. I would urge strong caution on opening up your content too freely, unless and until we have seen proper safeguards.
Bard agrees. “While Google assures on-device analysis,” it says, “any data accessed by Bard is technically collected, even temporarily. Concerns arise about potential leaks, misuse, or hidden data sharing practices. The extent of Bard’s analysis and how it uses your data should be transparent. Users deserve granular control over what data is analyzed, for what purposes, and how long it’s stored.” MORE FROM FORBESHow To Change Your Google Maps Settings After Street View Warning By Zak Doffman
Bard also warns that such data analysis might bias its results. “AI algorithms can perpetuate biases present in the data they’re trained on. Analyzing messages could lead to unintended profiling based on language, demographics, or social circles.”
This integration of generative AI chat and messaging will transform texting platforms forever, it will quickly open up a new competitive angle between Google, Apple and Meta, whose smartphone ecosystems and apps run our lives.
“While an exact date is still unknown,” Bard says, “all signs point towards Bard’s arrival in Google Messages sometime in 2024. It could be a matter of weeks or months, but it’s definitely coming.” Meanwhile, what we’ve seen thus far remains buried deep inside a beta release and subject to change before release.
When it is live, think carefully before you unlock your Messages privacy settings. “Ultimately,” says Bard, “the decision of whether to use message analysis rests with you. Carefully weigh the potential benefits against the privacy concerns and make an informed choice based on your own comfort level and expectations.”
The analysis of your message history isn’t the only word of caution here. This deployment of Bard is just part of the shift from browser-based to directed search, and you will need to be increasingly cautious as to the quality of the results you’re being given. Bard isn’t a chat with a friend. It’s a UI sitting across the world’s most powerful and valuable advertising and tracking machine.
On which note, Bard left me with a final thought that might be better directed at its creators than its users: “Remember, you have the right to demand clarity, control, and responsible AI development from the companies you trust with your data.”
Thank you very much for posting this here! Good on you for getting the word out on this.
We need an antitrust law that defines a monopoly by size/revenue of company statically by percent of US GDP, US wealth, or revenue in a particular industry.
Including parent/subsidiary companies
Yes.
I’m sorry, is the article quoting a fucking LLM as the interviewee? What the fuck is this? I feel like I’m taking crazy pills.
Does this affect users who doesn’t have a googpe acount and is running an old android version
Doesn’t matter if you turn it off, think about it. Who are you texting? Will they have turned it off?
Hmm good point.
