‘Put the Phone Away!’ – Whoopi Slams Joy’s Phone Habit And Eavesdropping Concerns Take Center Stage

Behar held up her device, warning the panel that her famously interruptive phone was listening to the conversation. “Why is your phone here?” asked Goldberg.

After a horrifying deep-sea virtual reality experience sent Whoopi Goldberg tumbling to the ground in recent years, the EGOT-winning actress has once again sounded the alarm over the technological apocalypse — particularly intrusive artificial intelligence.

The View moderator reminded everyone during a Wednesday morning Hot Topics discussion that AI is the devil, as she’s said numerous times on the air in the past.

“Now, I don’t like AI, personally,” the 69-year-old said. “It’s not a thing for me. I don’t like it. I had to deal with [Amazon] Alexa. I was like, I don’t want her. So, when she came out, I don’t use her.”

Joy Behar warns that her phone ‘is listening’ on ‘The View’.

Joy Behar, who has consistently waged war with an army of digital devices plaguing her at The View table — from her interruptive cell phone to Siri chiming in to give her directions to her seat — jumped in with a warning of her own.

“Well, they listen to what you’re saying, too,” the 82-year-old said.

Goldberg replied, “She has to be present in order to listen,” which made the studio audience laugh.

Unmoved, Behar continued, “Something is listening on this phone,” and she proceeded to show her phone to her fellow panelists several times.

“Why is your phone here?” Goldberg — perhaps sensing yet another one of Behar’s digital cacophonies — asked.

Behar replied, “It’s part of my body. But, if I say something like, ‘I really want to get some kind of hairdo,’ suddenly hairdo things pop up here. So, someone’s listening!”

Goldberg finished the segment by reminding The View audiences that she doesn’t “mind progress,” she just wants “some control over the progress” moving forward.

Whoopi Goldberg, Sara Haines, Joy Behar, Sunny Hostin, and Alyssa Farah Griffin on ‘The View’.

“I don’t like how AI has been laid out. It wasn’t presented to people, it was thrust on people, it was there,” she said. “It was in place before anybody realized what was happening. You were dealing with it before you knew you were dealing with it.”

On a 2024 episode of the talk show, Goldberg similarly raised a red flag over the ascent of AI, after a realistic AI influencer named Alba landed a gig hosting a Survivor segment in Spain.

“I can’t believe that you guys fell for this other B.S., and you can’t see anything wrong here,” she said at the time, later adding: “I told you what was coming four years ago, and I told you to stop fooling with all that, you know, talking to Siris, this is where she’s come from and it’s your fault.”