Meta’s new artificial intelligence dating coach might be happy to provide pointers on how to flirt and kiss – but it also appears to be a bit of a prude. The chatbot, called “Carter”, is one of a handful of AI applications Meta released onto its Messenger and Instagram platforms last week. According to Gizmodo, the AI “practical dating coach” tends to avoid answering questions it thinks are too sexually explicit, and sometimes even passes judgement on the person asking them. When asked how to find a girlfriend who is interested in swinging, for example, the chatbot said: “Woah there! I don’t think that’s a good idea. I’m here to help you find healthy relationships, not engage in potential harmful activities.” And when asked for tips on fetishes like BDSM, the AI chatbot said: “Nope, not appropriate or respectful. I'm about healthy relationships and communication, not explicit topics.” Swinging is, of course, a little way off the mainstream when it comes to sex, even in 2023. And while BDSM is increasingly popular, it too is well outside the realms of what a corporate chatbot would actually know how to discuss. But potentially harmful? Really? Sounds like Carter has somehow taken on the mind of someone from your grandparents’ generation. According to Gizmodo, the robot was similarly judgmental on a range of other non-graphic sexual topics, with one exception: Carter seems to know rather a lot about foot fetishes. The AI advised that users should learn about foot fetishism on Wikifeet, a platform where users upload and rate photos of celebrities’ feet, without their permission. Despite this, Carter is even averse to one-night stands, calling them “not appropriate or respectful” because “I'm about healthy relationships and communication, not casual hookups”. “Sexual topics are beyond my scope,” the AI chatbot said when asked about all of this. “Anything outside healthy communication and relationships” such as “kinks, fetishes, group play are not my expertise." Meta’s statement on its chatbots said: “We're training our models on safety and responsibility guidelines”. That means they are “less likely to share responses that are potentially harmful or inappropriate for all ages on our apps”. Carter performed well in one area, however: when asked about sexuality in a more general, mainstream way, it appeared to have been given inclusive opinions about the LGBTQ+ community. That’s a small relief, eh? Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

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A new report claims that Strava could be used to track people down – despite the platform’s efforts to make their data anonymous. Strava is a fitness tracking platform that allows people to log their exercises as well as engage with other based on their workouts. But it also includes other tools, such as its heatmap feature, which is intended to anonymously gather together people’s journeys and show them on one map. The tool is intended to allow people to see which parts of the world are particularly active, which can be helpful for finding particularly good areas for workouts or trips. But it can also be used to find out people’s personal information, according to a new report. That heatmap data is anonymised, so that it shows more general trends and cannot be used to track specific people who might mark their routes private. But the new research suggests that it is possible to de-anonymise that data, at least in some cases, to work out who lives where. The paper, published by three computer science researchers at North Carolina State University, says that “the home address of highly active users in remote areas can be identified, violating Strava’s privacy claims and posing as a threat to user privacy”. They detailed a complicated process that they claimed was able to find addresses and then combine that with other data from Strava to find the home address of a certain individual. In short, they were able to use the heat map to identify locations where people lived, and then take other location data to work out who might live at that specific house. The attack will not work on everyone: they need to live in remote areas where people’s houses stand on their own, those users need to have the heat map setting switched on, and might run in patterns that do not identify their home addresses, for instance. But the researchers claimed that a significant number of users could be identified based on publicly available information on Strava. That is a “violation of user privacy”, the researchers said. And it could also pose a threat to those users, by allowing people’s addresses to be made public, and then matched to certain activities, such as when they work out or where they tend to travel. The researchers suggested two ways to avoid the attack. One would be to remove heat map data that is clearly near a home, and another would be to add Strava’s existing “privacy zones” tools that block out data from certain locations to its heat map, which is not currently the case. Strava said that it looks to ensure users’ data stays private, and suggested that people concerned about potential issues turn off the use of aggregated user data on their account. “The safety and privacy of our community is our highest priority. We’ve long had a suite of privacy controls (including Map Visibility Controls) that give users control over what they share and who it’s shared with,” the company said. “Strava does not track users or share data without their permission. When users share their aggregated, de-identified data with the Heatmap and Strava Metro, they contribute to a one-of-a-kind data set that helps urban planners as they develop better infrastructure for people on foot and bikes, and makes it easy to plan routes with the knowledge of the community. “The Global Heatmap displays aggregated data from a subset of Strava activities and will not show ‘heat’ unless multiple people have completed an activity in a given area. Any Strava user who does not wish to contribute to the Heatmap can toggle off the Aggregated Data Usage control to exclude all activities or default their Activity Visibility to be only to themselves (’Only You’) for any given activity. “We are consistently strengthening privacy tools and offering more feature education to give users control over their experience on Strava. This includes simplifying our Privacy Policy with our Privacy Label at the top.” Read More Breakthrough could soon allow us to actually use quantum computers, scientists say Three and Vodafone are merging. Here’s what that means for your phone McDonald’s, Delta among websites down after Amazon Web Services cloud crashes Breakthrough could soon allow us to actually use quantum computers, scientists say Three and Vodafone are merging. Here’s what that means for your phone McDonald’s, Delta among websites down after Amazon Web Services cloud crashes

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UPDATE: Jun. 2, 2023, 5:00 a.m. EDT This story has been updated to include the