A South Korean Chatbot Scandal Shows the Threat A.I. Presents to Privacy

"I am captivated by a sense of fear I have never experienced in my entire life …" a user named Heehit wrote in a Google Play review of an app called Science of Love. This review was written right after news organizations accused the app's parent company, ScatterLab, of collecting intimate conversations between lovers without informing the users and then using the data to build a conversational A.I. chatbot called Lee-Luda. A majority of Americans are not confident about how companies will behave when it comes to using and protecting personal data. But it can be hard to imagine the potential harms--exactly how a company misusing or compromising data can possibly affect us and our lives. A recent incident of personal data misuse in South Korea provides us a clear picture of what can go wrong, and how consumers can fight back.