AI Invading Your Privacy: Quit Whining

I’ll rip the band aid and just say it out loud, “You’ve all started caring so much more about privacy ever since you’ve realized that the ‘AI hype’ is real! Suddenly, you’re all so much more fearful about your precious work, your art, and livelihood getting stolen!”

But hey, you’re all guilty of clicking that ‘Accept All Cookies’ button on unknown websites, multiple times, without even giving it a second thought! Without any worries about where that data was going, you’ve all signed that contract with the devil!

How many of you have a VPN connection? How many of you have a nice, paid Firewall? Not many, I bet – because these things costs you ‘subscription costs’, and of course, privacy takes a back seat when money is involved!

Let us talk about free stuff then – how many of you have Ad blockers installed in your browsers, that prevent you from being directed to suspicious websites?

How many of you visit such websites on your own, without any of the above protection?

The answers I get against the above argument is, “We’re not techie people! We were bamboozled into doing it! We’re not even aware how these things work!”

Then my question to all of you is, “Why do you want to keep repeating your mistakes again?”

This is not about privacy at all, this is about awareness! Yes, some of you said that the AI-thing is a bubble, others believed it is a cycle that repeatedly bulls and then tanks!

Of course, you can make innumerable reasons for not doing the right thing. You can make countless excuses for resisting the change! After all, you now have a non-human entity to blame for all our troubles! And a perfect one too; since nobody around you seems to understand it either? So it is way easier to pin all your life’s issues on, isn’t it?

Like it or not folks, but these AI developments are here to stay! AI isn’t going away, and it’s only going to get smarter. That’s why it’s so important to stay informed and ask questions. Who owns the data you share? How is it stored? Is it within your control and can you delete it? These are the kinds of questions that keep ‘tech companies’ accountable!

AI has this incredible ability to learn, predict, and adapt, but at its core, it’s fuelled by data—our data! Every search, every like, and every question we ask feeds the machine. And that’s where things start to feel a little unsettling. It’s not that AI is inherently bad—it’s that most of us don’t fully understand what we’re agreeing to when we share our information.

So let’s talk about it—what does privacy really mean in the age of AI, and what do you need to know to protect yourself?

First, let’s clear up one common misconception: AI doesn’t work like spyware. It doesn’t sit in the corner, silently monitoring you, recording everything you say or do. Instead, AI processes the data you choose to give it. Whether it’s you uploading a photo to a public AI image generator or asking a chatbot with a nefarious policy for advice, it uses that input to generate results. The smarter AI gets, the better it becomes at predicting what we want. The key take-away: it gets better based not on spying, but by learning patterns on the data that you chose to share with it!

The thing is, you can do all of those ‘fancy image generations’ or ‘chatbot thingies’ locally as well! Yes, you can do it all on your self-owned, well-protected machine at home; you just have to know and learn the right tools to do so! If you still prefer the internet method, you can choose to read the policies carefully. AI tools are becoming more transparent about how they handle data. They often come with privacy settings that let you control how your data is used. E.g., you can review permissions, limit what you share, and even turn off personalized features.

So in short: Be aware, and your privacy concerns will take care of themselves! At the end of the day, AI is only as smart as the data we give it. Let’s make sure we’re giving it the right boundaries too!

I’m passionate about making AI less intimidating and more accessible, which is why I started #DemystifyAI posts on my journal and Instagram. My goal is to help people understand the technology they’re using and feel confident about the choices they make.

So if you ever feel nervous about AI in the future, just know—I’m here, sharing posts and tips, and replying to all your queries on email and social media, just to keep AI simple and empowering.