AI chatbots are giving out people’s real phone numbers

AI chatbots like Google's Gemini and ChatGPT are accidentally revealing people's real phone numbers in their responses, sometimes giving out correct personal information and sometimes generating plausible-sounding but wrong numbers that still reach innocent people. Experts believe this happens because of personally identifiable information (PII, real details about people) in the training data (the information used to teach the AI), though the exact mechanism is unclear. The problem appears widespread and difficult to stop, with privacy removal companies reporting a 400% increase in requests about AI-related privacy concerns over the last seven months.