The legal status of AI chats and Google docs

Whether one can get into legal trouble for AI chats is something to which we should be paying attention. The AI platforms have been refreshingly honest about their right to share AI chats with third parties, which include authorities. In a recent piece of news (link), a federal judge ruled that attorney-client privilege does not extend to someone's chats with an AI chatbot even if they are preparation for talking to one's lawyers. This decision sounds reasonable – the AI is not a lawyer, and thus cannot be part of one's legal team. But I feel like the decision also raises perplexing questions. If one thinks of AI as a tool, then it's not much different from Google Docs or Microsoft Word. Word used to be more "private", in the sense that the software runs locally on one's computer, and works even without an Internet connection. Microsoft can't share our documents, as they don't exist on Microsoft's computers. Google Docs (or Word in the cloud) represents the class called SaaS software,…