A federal court ruling from earlier this year that didn’t get the attention it deserved, and it matters for anyone using AI companions or LLMs as a sounding board.
February 10, 2026 — United States v. Heppner. Bradley Heppner, former CEO of a bankrupt finance firm, charged with fraud. He’d used Claude (Anthropic) to draft defense-related documents after consulting his lawyers. His reasoning was simple enough: if conversations with attorneys are privileged, the prep work he did with Claude on top of those conversations should be too.
Judge Jed Rakoff (Southern District of New York) ruled otherwise. AI conversations aren’t covered by attorney-client privilege or the work-product doctrine. 31 documents went to the prosecution. Within a week, more than a dozen major US law firms sent client advisories telling them to stop using ChatGPT or Claude for anything sensitive.
What these apps actually store
Doesn’t matter if it’s Claude, ChatGPT, Replika, Candy, or Joi — the data cocktail is the same:
- Every message, word for word
- When you log in, how long you stay, at what hours
- What topics make you react, what you keep coming back to
Stack those three together and you can reconstruct someone’s daily schedule with uncomfortable precision. You can also model their emotional state day by day — because the way someone types at 11pm after a rough day isn’t the way they type at Sunday brunch.
There’s a name for this category: mental data. Arguably the most sensitive personal information that exists about a given person. Sharper than what their GP has on file.
The legal gap
Doctors, therapists, lawyers — they’re bound by professional confidentiality. When a judge subpoenas them, they can often push back.
An AI app, even one you use as a daily emotional confidant, has none of those protections. Subpoena, court order, warrant — the operator hands it over.
Rakoff just confirmed it.
Bottom line
The difference between an AI companion and a licensed therapist isn’t just the price tag. The therapist is legally bound by confidentiality. The AI isn’t.
So if you’re chatting up your AI girlfriend, by all means tell her to spin on your **** all night long. Just keep the dirt on your ex out of the chat — that stuff can come back to bite you.