Day: August 31, 2025

• There’s potential legal risk for people using AI chatbots for sensitive matters.
• Conversations with chatbots lack legal protections like doctor-patient or attorney-client privilege.
• People should use caution when conversing with chatbots, legal experts warned.

Artificial intelligence chatbots like OpenAI’s ChatGPT are increasingly serving as confidants and stand-in therapists for many users.

But for the average user, sharing your deepest secrets with AI tools can potentially open you up to serious risks. Those conversations are not legally protected in the same way that they would be with, say, a doctor, lawyer, therapist, or even a spouse, attorneys warned.

Two lawyers with expertise in AI-related legal issues told Business Insider that people should exercise caution when conversing with AI chatbots, be familiar with their terms of service and data retention policies, and understand that sensitive chat records, if relevant, could be subpoenaed in a lawsuit or government investigation.

“People are just pouring their hearts out in these chats, and I think they need to be cautious,” said Juan Perla, a partner at the global firm Curtis, Mallet-Prevost, Colt & Mosle LLP.

Perla, a leader in the firm’s AI practice, said, “Right now, there really isn’t anything that would protect them if a court really wanted to get to the chat for some reason related to a litigation.”

OpenAI CEO Sam Atlman raised this point during a podcast that aired last month, noting that users, especially young people, are frequently turning to ChatGPT as a therapist or life coach. “People,” the billionaire said, “talk about the most personal shit in their lives to ChatGPT.”

“Right now, if you talk to a therapist or a lawyer or a doctor about those problems, there’s like legal privilege for it — there’s doctor-patient confidentiality, there’s legal confidentiality,” Altman told podcaster Theo Von. “We haven’t figured that out yet for when you talk to ChatGPT.”

“So if you go talk to ChatGPT about your most sensitive stuff and then there’s like a lawsuit or whatever, we could be required to produce that, and I think that’s very screwed up,” Altman said.

This lack of legal confidentiality when using AI tools, Perla said, should make users think twice about how much they choose to share.

Chatbot messages tied to situations like a workplace dispute, divorce, or custody case could be subject to discovery in related litigation, he said. The same goes for messages related to potential criminal activity.

“If you’re putting something into ChatGPT because it’s something that you would normally only share with your medical doctor, with your therapist, or with a lawyer, that should already tell you, ‘I should not be putting this information in here,'” Perla said.

Even if users attempt to shield their identities or speak hypothetically to the chatbots, that won’t fully eliminate possible risk.

The “wisest and safest” thing to do is not have those sensitive conversations with AI chatbots at all, Perla said.

“If you’re talking about your personal intimate affairs with a chatbot that have nothing to do with the commission of a crime, that have nothing to do with a dispute or a litigation that could emerge, then the likelihood that these chats are going to be public or be turned over to a court or another party in discovery is pretty low,” Perla said.

Knowing how AI platforms handle data

James Gatto, a partner at Sheppard Mullin who co-leads the firm’s AI industry team of attorneys, told Business Insider that it’s crucial for users to understand how different AI tools handle their data.

Some paid versions of certain AI platforms may offer more robust privacy features, such as the automatic deletion of user inputs, while the free, public versions typically do not, he said.

“If I was going to use a tool for anything sensitive. I’d want a tool that deleted the information,” Gatto said. “And I would want to make sure the terms of service explicitly calls that out.”

If users care about confidentiality and protecting themselves from any kinds of future legal risks, they must do their own diligence, he said.

“The important takeaway is you need to understand the pros and cons of using these tools, you need to understand the legal and personal risk,” Gatto said.

“There may be circumstances where you’re taking some risk, but the worst case scenario is not that bad,” Gatto said. “There are other cases where a worst-case scenario is really bad and you wouldn’t want to do it.”

Perla added that the risk factor should be weighed “any time we’re creating a record — text messages, chats, for sure.”

“The question should be,” Perla said, “am I comfortable with this information ever landing in the hands of somebody else that is not the person that I thought I was having this conversation with, or that is limited to the technology that I was engaged with?”

• Each year, Business Insider highlights Wall Street’s rising stars.
• These are executives to watch in investment banking, trading, and investing.
• All are 35 or younger. Check out our lists over the years.

We’re gearing up for our next list of Wall Street’s Rising Stars.

For eight years, Business Insider’s Rising Stars of Wall Street list has spotlighted the young professionals redefining finance. We’ve highlighted traders rewriting the playbook, investors shaping private markets, and influential dealmakers across firms like Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Blackstone, and Citadel who quickly left their mark.

Many of these honorees have since risen to lead teams, execute multibillion-dollar deals, and influence the direction of the industry.

As we prepare to publish the 2025 edition this fall, take a look back at the standout talent we’ve recognized over the years — and why this list has become a guide to Wall Street’s future leaders.

2024

Meet our 2024 class

Our most recent set of young professionals reflect the future of finance. Several of them are shaping the trajectory of clean energy and artificial intelligence by financing the infrastructure that will underpin these developments. Some have seen their focus go from niche to hot asset. Others are influencing how Wall Street interacts with Main Street, using their skills and savvy to create new products and services for ordinary investors or giving employees at portfolio companies ownership stakes.

The rising stars also shared how they unwind and stay grounded in order to stay mentally sharp.

2023

Meet the 2023 class

2023’s cohort included traders setting new playbooks for deals and trades and an investor building out burgeoning private markets businesses within the world’s largest bank. These influencers also financed some of the biggest deals of the past few years and provided an edge to top investors with complex and innovative products.

They shared the lessons learned from their biggest career mistakes and how their Wall Street wardrobe had evolved from their COVID work-from-home days.

2022

Meet the class of 2022

As Wall Street navigated volatile markets, fewer deals, and plummeting company valuations, we found the players rising up despite the challenges.

One invested in space ventures, and another executed multibillion-dollar trades. Some up-and-comers pushed their teams to the top of industry rankings.

From books on the science of sleep to fantasy football strategy podcasts, here’s what these bright leaders were reading and listening to. And here are some of their lessons and advice.

Here are the previous editions of our Wall Street Rising Stars list:

• 2021
• 2020
• 2019
• 2018
• 2017

• Grindr’s CEO told Business Insider that great AI companies would “get destroyed” thanks to the growing “VC bubble.”
• “A few people will set the trends, then everyone will jump in that direction,” he said.
• Grindr has embraced new tech, building “AI-native” products and introducing gAI (pronounced “gay-I”).

Grindr may be an “AI-first company” these days, but its CEO remains skeptical of the amount of money being thrown at certain AI companies.

The debate over whether an AI bubble is forming has reached a fever pitch in the past few months. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman recently told reporters that “overexcited” investors were practicing bubble-like behavior around the industry.

Business Insider asked the LGBTQ+ dating app’s CEO George Arison about Altman’s comments. Arison said that a “VC bubble” was forming — but that the AI incumbents have an incentive to advise against investment.

“This is how venture always works,” Arison told Business Insider. “Most VCs are actually followers, not trendsetters. A few people will set the trends, then everyone will jump in that direction and too much money will go into that space.”

Arison also warned that a lot of “great companies” would “get destroyed” because of the VC frenzy around AI. He analogized it to the late-2010s SoftBank investments.

“How many companies probably should not have taken money from SoftBank five, seven years ago?” Arison said. “Had they not done that, they might have still been around.”

SoftBank invested $9 billion in WeWork, which later filed for bankruptcy. It also invested $375 million in Zume, which has now shut down. SoftBank did not respond to a request for comment.

Arison said that the “VC bubble” was specifically forming on the “application side,” and not among the architecture or model companies.

“How many sales agents do you need?” he asked.

The bubble isn’t too worrying, though, Arison said. He called it an “inevitable component of how venture capital works.” Some companies will fail, but others will be “very, very successful,” he said.

Arison declined to speak to the OpenAI CEO’s remarks specifically, but spoke more broadly about “incumbent” AI companies that want to protect themselves.

“If you are an incumbent large AI player, you kind of want to stop a lot of investment from going into this space because you now have a unique competitive advantage,” Arison said.

OpenAI did not respond to a request for comment.

Arison also said that the AI field was rife with competitors rapidly outpacing each other. He analogized it to his first company, Taxi Magic. Originally a Blackberry app, Taxi Magic was an early iteration of mobile car-booking company, but then Uber came along and out-innovated it.

“Cursor, which is an innovator, is being out-innovated by Anthropic because Claude Code, a lot of people would say is way better,” Arison said, before clarifying that he himself doesn’t have a preference between the two vibe-coding tools. Grindr uses both, he said.

Arison also sees innovation happening in the foundation models themselves.

“What Elon has done with Grok is actually pretty incredible,” he said. “You have other companies that have been working on these things for so long, and he created something brand-new and most likely it’s headed in the direction of it being better than anybody else.”

Ultimately, Arison said he didn’t think that VCs were over-investing in AI. He’s excited about the tech; Grindr released a slide deck with its second-quarter earnings this year about how the company was embracing gAI. (That’s pronounced “gay-I.”)

What Arison emphasized was that the money was going to the wrong places.

“VCs are herd,” he said. “Wherever the three sheep go, then everybody else follows.”

• TikTok has more than 1,800 open roles in the US on its jobs portal.
• The company and its owner are looking for talent in focus areas like AI, e-commerce, and search.
• Work visa data reveals how much TikTok pays for jobs, including in engineering and data science.

TikTok’s US plans are up in the air due to a divest-or-ban law that puts its future in jeopardy. But it’s still offering six-figure salaries to workers this year in key areas like e-commerce and artificial intelligence.

It’s sought to hire data scientists to sharpen its search algorithm, court workers to grow its e-commerce platform TikTok Shop, and bring in machine learning engineers to improve its content feed and recommendations.

The company’s jobs portal lists over 1,800 open roles in the US in cities like Austin, San Jose, Seattle, and New York.

Like other Big Tech firms, work expectations at TikTok and its owner, ByteDance, are demanding. The company runs performance reviews twice a year, and low scorers can be placed on performance-improvement plans or even shown the door. But the opportunity to work at one of the most influential tech companies in the world continues to draw in talent.

Outside e-commerce, TikTok is shaking up areas like music marketing and young people’s news habits. If it can navigate political tides in the US and China, where ByteDance was founded, it will stand alongside YouTube and a few other players in shaping the next phase of media.

“From a career growth standpoint, you have access to huge budgets and big names,” a former staffer said of working at TikTok. “Everyone in the industry wants to talk to you.”

While TikTok and ByteDance don’t disclose salary information publicly (unless required by state law), they do submit pay ranges in federal filings when they look to hire workers from outside the US.

To understand more about the company’s pay rates, Business Insider reviewed thousands of TikTok salary offers for foreign hires at the company, as well as its owner, ByteDance, for the first three quarters of this reporting year that ran through June 30. The results don’t include equity or other benefits that employees often receive in addition to base pay. But they paint a picture of the range of pay a worker might expect in roles like software engineering, data science, or product management.

The foreign-hire data shows a wide range of salaries at the companies. For example, a finance representative could earn $65,000 a year, and a global head of product and design position could fetch a $949,349 annual salary.

Backend software engineers at TikTok could earn between $144,000 and $301,158, based on the salary data, though rates increased beyond that for specialties like trust and safety. Data scientist positions at TikTok were generally offered between $85,821 and $283,629 — or more in specific areas like e-commerce. For TikTok machine learning scientists, the range was between $168,000 and $390,000, while general marketing managers were offered between $85,000 and $430,000.

These salary offers fall in line with pay rates in federal applications at other Big Tech firms. Meta’s first-quarter visa filings revealed it offered data scientists between $122,760 and $270,000, for example. Meanwhile, a staff software engineer at Google could receive between $220,000 and $323,000, according to the company’s first-quarter filings.

Here are the salary ranges TikTok and ByteDance offered for other roles in key business areas, based on recent applications. TikTok and ByteDance did not respond to requests for comment.

E-commerce and TikTok Shop roles

TikTok Shop – Celebrity Team Live Operation Manager: $94,000

TikTok Shop – US Data Analyst – Logistics: $128,000

TikTok Shop – Campaign Strategy Operations Manager: $132,000

TikTok Shop – Category Manager – Health: $135,000

TikTok Shop – Anti-Fraud Ops Program Mgr – Global Selling: $180,000

TikTok Shop – Data Scientist: $218,000 to $304,000

Product Manager, User Growth Customer Lifecycle-TikTok Shop: $220,000

Strategy Manager, E-Commerce: $228,000 to $230,000

Software Engineer – E-commerce Recommendation Infrastructure: $237,000 to $315,207

TikTok Shop – Inventory Placement Strategy Manager: $250,000

TikTok Shop- Compliance Operation: $257,600

Senior Machine Learning Engineer, E-commerce: $320,000

Tech Lead – E-commerce Recommendation Infrastructure: $320,113

Logistics Procurement Lead, TikTok US E-commerce: $350,000

Senior Data Scientist, Content E-commerce: $350,000

Tech Lead, Global E-commerce Governance Platform: $365,000

Global E-commerce Solutions Manager: $480,000

AI and machine learning roles

Software Engineer (AI Platform): $144,000

Research Scientist (TikTok AI Privacy): $188,000

Product Manager GenAI Safety, Trust & Safety: $218,400

Senior Product Designer, Creation (AI Projects): $221,368

Machine Learning Engineer – Computer Vision: $228,960

Software Engineer, Machine Learning Infrastructure: $270,000 to $320,783

Site Reliability Engineer, AI Applications: $276,000

AI Product Manager: $300,010

Product Manager Lead, Emerging Product & AI Safety: $336,000

AI Security Researcher – Security Flow: $340,000

Senior Machine Learning Engineer, TikTok Recommendation: $386,115

Search roles

Search Product Operations – Creator Search Optimization: $110,000

Software Engineer – TikTok Search Business Infrastructure: $154,880 to $214,720

Product Manager, Search Ads: $205,000

Machine Learning Engineer – Search Ads: $229,200 to $354,000

Machine Learning Engineer – TikTok Search: $241,200 to $300,000

Senior Machine Learning Engineer – TikTok Search Business: $268,920

Product Manager – TikTok Search: $287,500

Product Manager, Search Content Ecosystem: $400,000

Leader of Search and Recommendation Product (ByteDance): $540,552

Search Ads Closed-loop Product Manager: $564,000