This column aims to examine how advances in artificial intelligence (AI) raise the salience of thinking about patron data. It explores how AI’s scale, low cost and capacity to aggregate and cross-reference data from diverse sources impact vendor relations and library-housed patron information.
This is a viewpoint column that synthesizes recent research and reporting. It was copy-edited with Claude Sonnet 5, Claude Opus 5, ChatGPT Sol 5.6, Gemini 3.1 Pro and Gemma 4.
AI lowers the cost and raises the scale of cyberattacks. The column recommends libraries prepare for a world where synthetic impersonation and data breaches are increasingly common. It notes that even modest amounts of retained data can carry meaningful risk. Vendor data-sharing practices are highlighted. Libraries already possess considerable collaborative infrastructure that can be applied to conducting private data inventories, mitigating risk and planning for worst case scenarios.
This column underscores the need to apply libraries’ rich tradition of privacy tools to pro-active preparation for a world where AI changes how data works online.
