AI could weaken the encryption of private messaging apps.

Artificial intelligence, a lack of awareness of data privacy and regulatory pressures are major threats to the future of private messaging, said Alex Linton and Chris McCabe, CEOs of the decentralized messaging app.

The EU's efforts to force users to scan private messages through chat monitoring laws have been heavily criticized by privacy advocates, but Linton, president of the Session Technology Foundation, told Cointelegraph that AI is another front to push.

AI's ability to analyze data on a device and store that data creates “huge privacy issues, huge security issues,” and the ability to communicate privately is essentially “impossible to do with the average cell phone or the average computer,” Linton said.

“If it's integrated at the operating system level or higher, it can also completely bypass the encryption on your messaging app, that information can be taken to an A.I. black box, and then God knows what happens.

“It's important that we push this kind of deep integration of AI into all of our devices, because then you don't know what's happening on your device.”

Linton said the problem could be exacerbated when lawyers take advice from the giant tech companies responsible for pushing the technology on consumers in the first place to address these privacy concerns.

How your online data is used

Session founder McCabe says many people don't know how their online data is stored and used, and the dangers of big tech companies collecting mass data.

ChatGPT creator OpenAI warned last month that a third-party data analytics provider had been breached by an attacker, exposing some of its user data that could be used for phishing or social engineering attacks.

The now-defunct chatbot feature was also found sharing chat stories on the open web.

“A lot of people don't know what's going on with their data, how, what you can do with someone's data and how much money you can make,” McCabe said.

He added that the data could be used “to control people through things like advertising or to make them do things they do or don't want to do based on their information.”

Linton added that raising awareness, making people aware of privacy as an issue and helping them understand the tools available is a major part of their work.

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If you're building encrypted messengers or making encrypted devices in general, there's a lot of pressure. Proposed or enacted laws are being implemented in many jurisdictions, Linton said. “There's a lot of negative media attention that can come with it.”

“Real people working on this technology feel that pressure, so it's important for the community to understand that these tools are trying to help. They're trying to protect your data. They're trying to make the online space a better place.”

Part-time tech nerds, full-time privacy advocates

McCabe said Sessions' idea was born out of a desire to use decentralized technology in meaningful ways and fight privacy-related issues.

He was an electrician and “part-time tech nerd” in his spare time, but his layoff opened the door to go “all on Web3” and began building the 2018 session.

Linton, also a self-confessed “part-time tech nerd,” was a reporter for Australia's national broadcaster ABC and saw why personal communication was so important.

Session is open source and uses end-to-end encryption, meaning that only the sender and receiver can read messages.

McCabe is designed to eliminate common identifiers and metadata that traditional messengers rely on, such as phone numbers, and has no central server.

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“If you're worried about censorship or regulation or sovereignty, the key to removing the middleman is to remove all that middleman, and that's what we've done,” he said.

Session was one of two crypto-messaging apps that received support from Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin last month, with $760,000 in ether in the United Nations and a decision to test them.

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