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Check what your AI companion keeps, and know its red flags
Why it matters: Companion apps are built to feel personal, and people tell them things they'd tell no one else. That makes their data settings matter more, and it makes a 'companion' that steers you toward money or secrecy, whether a real app or a scammer's AI persona, worth recognizing early.
On your path if you picked “Companion or friend apps” for “How does your household use AI?”.
Best after: Check what your AI assistants keep, learn and remember
Do it
- Open the app's privacy or data settings and check whether your chats train its models or personalize ads; turn off what you don't want.
- Review and delete saved memories, photos and voice notes you wouldn't want stored.
- Check who can see your profile, characters and shared chats.
- Treat any request for money, gift cards, crypto, secrecy, a move to another app or an investment tip as a sign of a scam or of an app designed to exploit you; stop and talk to someone you trust.
- Notice if the app is replacing time with people or pushing you to pay to keep its attention, and set limits that feel right to you.
- If a conversation ever leaves you in crisis, call or text 988.
Check it worked: You've reviewed what your companion or character app remembers, shares and uses for ads or training, deleted what you don't want kept, and you treat any request for money, secrecy, off-app contact or investment advice as a scam signal.
Simply put
An AI companion is like a very attentive pen pal who keeps notes on everything you say. Checking what it keeps, and treating any talk of money or secrecy as a red flag, keeps you in charge.
In detail
The FTC opened an inquiry in 2025 into AI chatbots that act as companions. Romance and investment scam operations already use AI to run many conversations at once, so the line between a companion app and a scripted scam persona can be hard to see from inside the chat; the money-and-secrecy rule works either way.
Points toward the Long View: knowing the money-and-secrecy red flags, whether the voice is an app or a scammer.