Rosenverse

Log in or create a free Rosenverse account to watch this video.

Log in Create free account

100s of community videos are available to free members. Conference talks are generally available to Gold members.

When AI Becomes the User’s Point Person—and Point of Failure
Thursday, August 7, 2025 • Rosenfeld Community
Share the love for this talk
When AI Becomes the User’s Point Person—and Point of Failure
Speakers: Heidi Trost
Link:

Summary

Imagine slipping on a sleek pair of smart glasses. Not only do you look sharp, the glasses capture everything you see, hear, and do. Your AI assistant—built into the glasses and synced to your email, social media accounts, health apps, and finances—manages your life. It’s tasked with paying bills, booking trips, replying to messages, even helping you swipe right. Over time, you find yourself chitchatting with your AI assistant. You call him Charlie. Now imagine you’re a threat actor. That trust between user and AI assistant? It’s your entry point. If your product is powered by AI, you’re not just designing features—you’re designing an entire relationship. You’re designing Charlie. Let’s talk about where that goes wrong—and how to get it right.

Key Insights

  • Users often do not understand why AI-powered systems request extensive personal data, increasing privacy risks.

  • Trust in AI agents can become excessive, creating new vectors for manipulation by threat actors.

  • Security issues typically occur beneath the surface until alerts disrupt the user experience, often causing frustration.

  • Prompt injection attacks pose a novel threat where malicious inputs manipulate AI agents to access sensitive user data.

  • Multimodal AI interfaces introduce complexity in security decisions, increasing chances for user errors.

  • Secure by default settings reduce burden on users and improve overall protection without requiring user intervention.

  • Cross-disciplinary collaboration between UX, security, product, legal, and compliance teams is crucial for safer AI design.

  • Users need clear, contextual guidance during onboarding to make informed decisions about data sharing and security settings.

  • Transparency about AI limitations and giving users the option to reverse AI actions are essential for building trust.

  • Threat actors are likely to exploit growing AI access to personal data and automate vulnerabilities discovery.

Notable Quotes

"When a product is powered by AI, you're not just designing the features; you are designing an entire relationship."

"Charlie is like the most annoying coworker who constantly surfaces problems but never offers solutions to Alice."

"Threat actors probably know your system better than you do and are looking for any entry points to exploit."

"Alice often perceives Charlie as just another barrage of alerts filled with jargon she doesn't understand."

"Prompt injection attacks can trick AI agents into accessing private data like emails without the user realizing."

"People become incrementally more comfortable giving away data because they see the value AI provides."

"We need secure defaults that protect users out of the box without them having to figure it out."

"Alert fatigue is real; users can't be burdened with constant security decisions or they'll ignore them."

"Giving users the ability to reverse AI-driven actions is critical but currently underexplored."

"If Charlie has been tampered with, Alice needs a clear way to be alerted that she shouldn't trust it."

Ask the Rosenbot
Dem Gerolemou
Climate technology fundamentals
2024 • Climate UX Interest Group
Tamara Hale
War Stories LIVE! Tamara Hale
2020 • Advancing Research 2020
Gold
Sarah Williams
Verizon_A Framework for CX Transformation
2024 • Design at Scale 2021
Gold
Jane Reid
Self-care in User Research
2020 • Advancing Research Community
Deanna Mitchell
Designing with culture: Unlocking impactful insights for Product and UX
2025 • Advancing Research 2025
Gold
Charlotte Lee
Theme 1 Intro
2021 • Civic Design 2021
Gold
James Lang
If you can design an app, you can design a community
2025 • Rosenfeld Community
JP Allen
Navigating the UX Tools Landscape
2021 • DesignOps Summit 2021
Gold
Surya Vanka
Unleashing Swarm Creativity to Solve Enterprise Challenges
2021 • Design at Scale 2021
Gold
Sharon Bautista
Time to Make the Donuts: How User Research Helped Bridge Disparate Teams
2024 • Enterprise Experience 2020
Gold
Bria Alexander
State of DesignOps Panel
2021 • DesignOps Summit 2021
Gold
Amber Knabl
Empowering innovation: The critical role of inclusive product development in the AI era
2024 • Designing with AI 2024
Gold
Louis Rosenfeld
Welcome / Housekeeping
2023 • Enterprise UX 2023
Gold
Jim Kalbach
Jazz Improvisation as a Model for Team Collaboration
2017 • DesignOps Summit 2017
Gold
Taylor Klassman
Shaping the Next Era of UX Research: Collaborative Forum
2025 • Advancing Research 2025
Gold
Sarah Barrett
The "How" of Enterprise Information Architecture
2023 • Enterprise UX 2023
Gold

More Videos

Aaron Stienstra

"Citizen participation is like eating spinach—everyone agrees it’s good, but few actually do it meaningfully."

Aaron Stienstra Lashanda Hodge

Leveraging Civic Design to Advance Equity and Rebuild Trust in the US Federal Government

December 8, 2021

Sharbani Dhar

"SAFE is essentially a software development methodology, and fitting experience design into it has been a constant trial and error."

Sharbani Dhar

Breathing Room for Delight

January 8, 2024

Magdalena Zadara

"Only 50% of people in Germany interact with authorities online, compared to 80-90% in Nordic countries."

Magdalena Zadara

Zero Hour: How to Get Far Quickly When Starting Your Digital Service Unit Late

November 16, 2022

George Abraham

"Accessibility is driven by compliance, especially for government markets with strict keyboard navigation requirements."

George Abraham Stefan Ivanov

Design Systems To-Go: Indigo.Design Overview and Exploring the Developer Workflow (Part 3)

October 1, 2021

Louis Rosenfeld

"Enterprise UX is about delivering strong experiences in an enterprise setting, which ain’t easy."

Louis Rosenfeld

Welcome / Housekeeping

June 6, 2023

Steve Chaparro

"Culture design is the flesh that makes the bones of organizational design come alive through behaviors and interactions."

Steve Chaparro

Bringing Into Alignment Brand, Culture and Space

August 13, 2020

Jackie Ajoux

"When you get lonely, battle that loneliness by identifying allies and people you can trust in your organization and the design ops community."

Jackie Ajoux

Leveling-Up: A Single-Player’s Guide to the DesignOps Team-of-One

January 8, 2024

Shanti Mathew

"A standard framework for collecting and responding to family feedback at the organizational level can increase their voice’s impact."

Shanti Mathew Natalie Sims Natalia Radywyl

Civic Design at Scale: Introducing the Public Policy Layer Cake

December 9, 2021

Adam Cutler

"Just follow your heart and what makes you happy rather than the traditional career ceilings."

Adam Cutler Karen Pascoe Ian Swinson Susan Worthman

Discussion

June 8, 2016