Your new AI pal is so nice. But can it be trusted?
Artificial intelligence has seemingly overtaken the world. Some workers are losing jobs to AI, and many businesses tout how artificial intelligence is improving their products or services. Consumers are routinely sharing a lot of their personal information with AI platforms, with names like ChatGPT, Claude and Google Gemini.
But is that safe? Suppose you share your financial data with an AI platform. Could you one day discover the entire system has been hacked, and that a diabolical cybercriminal mastermind now has all of your information? It’s a question worth considering.
A lot of people are using AI to discuss all sorts of facets of their lives, from personal problems to asking for career advice to working out a budget or figuring out their taxes.
Discussing your fear of heights with AI is probably no big deal, but should you be giving an AI program your financial information? Could it someday become a middleman to a hacker?
Experts say you should proceed with caution. Before you share everything with your AI partner, ask yourself these three questions first.
1. Am I Paying for the AI Platform?
Your monetary investment matters a lot, says Nathan Evans, an associate teaching professor and faculty director for cybersecurity at the University of Denver.
“Often, the answer comes down to what kind of agreements or guarantees you have from the AI provider about what they are going to do with your data,” Evans says.
“For example, if you are using Google Gemini or ChatGPT on a free tier plan, there is no promise from Google or OpenAI that they won’t use your information for training purposes or for advertising purposes in the future,” he adds.
For instance, Evans says that Google Gemini has a privacy agreement buried on a help page: “Please don’t enter confidential information in your conversations or any data you wouldn’t want a reviewer to see or Google to use to improve our products, services and machine-learning technologies.”
Evans says that he thinks consumers can feel more comfortable sharing financial information if they are paying to use an AI platform. But he says, “Of course, you have to read the privacy policies and user agreements when you sign up with them,” and it’s clear that many consumers don’t.
“So, generally my advice would be not to include any financial or sensitive data in an AI product that you are not paying for,” Evans says. “If the product is free, then you are likely the product. You are paying for the product by providing your data to the company to use however they can profit from it.”
2. How Much Information Am I Sharing?
We already share a lot of our personal information with many online financial firms, points out David Shapiro, the chief information officer at Lebanon Valley College in Annville, Pennsylvania.
“If we already trust tax services, online banking and trading platforms with sensitive financial information, it’s not a stretch to cautiously trust AI systems as well, especially when we use them with intention and good judgment,” Shapiro says.
He adds that “most generative AI platforms don’t keep your uploaded documents for longer than needed. They process them and typically delete the file after a short period. The model may learn from the interaction, but the content itself is not retained in full.”
Still, Shapiro says that you could protect yourself by offering only pertinent personal finance information.
“If you’re using AI to help with tax-related tasks, for instance, consider removing the section with your name or Social Security number before uploading. If it’s a bank summary, take out the account number or anything that ties the document directly to you. In other words, give the system only what it needs, no more,” Shapiro says.
3. Am I Going to Live in the 21st Century or Not?
You could argue that not using AI to help you with your money will someday be as unusual as not using your bank’s app or website. And if you don’t adapt to AI, you could miss out on utilizing a tool that could assist you in making smart financial decisions.
As Shapiro says, “AI is helping us, allowing us to tackle hard problems, look at data in new ways and move faster than ever. Is there risk? Of course. But for me, the benefits outweigh that risk. I’m personally not about to give up online banking, tax software or AI tools that make my life easier and more effective.”
Meanwhile, Rajiv Kohli, a professor of business at the Raymond A. Mason School of Business at William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, says that “just like any other digital data online, AI can be hacked and data can be misused. Sharing financial information with AI is no more risky than using online tax preparation software or loan application form.”
Actually, AI may even be safer, according to Kohli.
“If you think from a hacker’s perspective, it is more efficient to hack a financial site that has thousands of mortgage applications than to hack a general AI application where people may have uploaded financial information,” he says.
But, again, a lot of this depends on whether you’re paying for an AI platform or using a free one. Even if you are paying for an AI service, Evans says “that doesn’t really guarantee your data will be safe. Breaches of major organizations happen all the time, and if your data – say, your chat and API request history with OpenAI – is stored somewhere, it’s always possible a breach will expose this information to attackers in the future.”
He adds: “While AI companies have exploded in the past few years, that doesn’t mean they have perfect data protection practices.”
Evans says that whenever possible, he doesn’t send private or personal information to any AI online applications that he wouldn’t want seen by anyone else.
Of course, these decisions are judgment calls. Still, suppose you can get your questions answered by AI without providing sensitive information like your Social Security number or bank account number. In that case, it certainly seems prudent not to furnish that information.
In other words, use your human intelligence alongside artificial intelligence. AI may be the future, but thinking for yourself is never going to go out of style.
