Take My Personal Info, Please!
If you need yet another reason AI agents will be so powerful: we’ll soon be urging them to take our most private information..
It happened to me today. I found myself pleading with Copilot: “Take my information. Remember it. Use it.”
Can you think of another moment since the dawn of the internet where you’ve insisted on handing over personal details?
I’ve spent a career in and around ad targeting. When considering matters of privacy, we’d use this analogy:
If a random stranger asks for your personal info, you’d run. But if you’re in the ER, you’ll tell the surgeon anything he needs to know.
The point: when sharing information is clearly in your interest, you’ll do it — with the right entity, for the right purpose.
We used this to justify personalization: if we do it well — in an ad, a product page, or an email — you’d be grateful we had your info.
Of course, that’s not how most consumers feel. Probably because we've rarely done it well. To get permission, marketers to still need to bury barely-legal data‑use policies like toxic waste. And regulators have noticed — the U.S. Supreme Court recently told advertisers they need clearer consent mechanisms.
On to today: I was using Copilot to draft something that referenced some of my personal details.
Instead of building on what I’d given it, it kept defaulting to platitudes. So I asked for a stateful relationship. To remember my prompt, the template, my personal details, - all for future use. I literally asked it to remember these things "until one of us dies."
I knew Microsoft was working on this, so was hopeful.
Copilot agreed. And when I referenced these things in a new session, the output from Co-pilot was statefully spectacular.
I can see myself sharing all sorts of data with agents to help me with, as long as they provide value:
Shopping: “I need a new derailleur for my gravel bike.”
Travel: “Find another father/son trip idea”
Health: “I have the same persistent cough again.”
Two things feel inevitable:
We’ll all be pleading with AI to take our most personal info.
If this isn’t closely regulated, today’s spam, robocalls, and doomscrolls will feel quaint by comparison.
(I just asked Copilot to review this post. So now it knows that I know that it knows.)
