In today’s technology-driven world, it’s easy to rely on a smartphone’s GPS to get across town. But what happens when it stops working? That question is at the center of new research at The University of Texas at Arlington.

AI models – for example, those used for cancer detection – are trained on patients’ health data. Even the mere fact that personal data has been incorporated into a model can have negative consequences for those affected if this information falls into the wrong hands. In “Nature”, a research team now shows that, using the right methods, this sensitive information can be extracted from models far more effectively than previously thought.