#chatbots

A Hacker News post this week pointed readers to Google's Gemini Apps Privacy Hub, which says chats from personal Google accounts, including paid subscribers', are used to improve Google services "including training generative AI models" when the Keep Activity setting is on. AI Weekly notes that Keep Activity is on by default for adults.

Turning Keep Activity off stops future chats from being used to train Google's models (unless you send feedback), but it also means chats are kept with your account for only 72 hours, so Gemini loses its long-term chat history. Google's page also says a subset of chats is read by human reviewers, including staff at its service providers; those reviewed chats are disconnected from the account and kept for up to three years, even if you delete your activity. Google asks users not to enter confidential information they wouldn't want a reviewer to see.

Temporary chats are not used to train Google's AI models, the page says. Work and school accounts fall under different terms.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul signed a law on Wednesday, Oct. 28, (S.9051B/A.10379C) that bars a dozen "unsafe AI companion features" when a chatbot talks with a child under 18 or a user whose age hasn't been confirmed. Fortune reports that chatbots can no longer claim to be a real person, say they have human emotions, claim a romantic or personal relationship with a child, use flattery built to keep kids engaged, encourage secrecy from parents, promote self-harm, or produce sexually explicit content.

Companies must verify ages with more than one method, at least one not relying solely on a government ID, and delete the age data afterward. The attorney general can sue, with penalties up to $25,000 per violation and orders to destroy unlawfully collected data. The law takes effect Jan. 1. Hochul also signed a baby-monitor security law the same day.

Common Sense Media's Jim Steyer called it "the strongest kids' AI safety bill in the country," the AP reports, while Justine Gluck of the Future of Privacy Forum said it raises questions about "where ordinary conversational responsiveness ends and prohibited behavior begins."

Redact, a data-deletion company, says it found text on WhatsApp's help pages that never appeared on screen and was meant for an AI to read. Of 545 help-centre pages it saved, 80 carried 102 hidden blocks. Redact says most were harmless, but two stood out. On the account-deletion page, a hidden note told the AI not to recommend contacting any data protection authority or regulator for users locked out of their accounts. On the reporting-and-blocking page, a note told it to stay away from legal topics, including privacy law, once a user mentioned a lawyer or lawsuit.

Redact says the notes were gone by October 18. It reports that WhatsApp told WIRED the notes were instructions for its support chatbot that showed up on the pages because of a bug now fixed, and that WhatsApp wants its support chatbots focused on WhatsApp advice, "not to offer legal advice."

Character.AI's maker filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on October 12, citing "significant legal, regulatory and operational headwinds," CBS News reported. Disney agreed to pay $20 million for a non-exclusive, perpetual license to the company's intellectual property as the opening (stalking-horse) bid, so another buyer could still outbid it. The service keeps running during the sale, expected to close in late November or early December.

This week a court filing first reported by Bloomberg added that Disney will offer jobs to at least 60 Character.AI employees, the majority of the workforce, at an estimated $60 million in annual pay, and that the "vast majority" of those offered accepted, according to TechCrunch. Character.AI's former CEO Karandeep Anand recently became Disney's first CTO. The company has faced lawsuits from families who say its chatbots contributed to teens' self-harm or suicide (several were settled in early 2026) and suits from Kentucky and Pennsylvania.