Cybernews researchers found an unprotected Kafka Broker server operated by Hong Kong-based developer Imagime Interactive Limited, exposing user data from its Chattee Chat and GiMe Chat AI companion apps with no access control or authentication. The exposed database contained more than 43 million intimate messages and over 600,000 images and videos belonging to over 400,000 users, who exchanged an average of 107 messages each with their AI companions. The server was taken offline in mid-September after being indexed by public IoT search engines; researchers could not confirm whether the data had already been accessed by malicious actors.