The company recently removed thousands of private chat conversations after Backlash due to the chatbot’s “sharing” feature.
Fast Company This week, ChatGpt users may have inadvertently had conversations with AI Chatbot’s public and searchable conversations. this Fast Company The report found nearly 4,500 Chatgpt conversations in Google search results, some of which are about mental health struggles, relationships, and other personal and sensitive topics. Fortunately, the public conversation did not identify the users behind the post.
How did these conversations end up appearing on the Internet?
Until recently, ChatGPT users were able to share chats with friends, family or colleagues publicly. This feature is similar to the sharing settings on Google Docs and will provide users with public links to chats they can send to others. Another option gives users the option to make posts “discoverable” and Google particularly discoverable – regardless of whether the user is aware of it or not.
When a user creates a shareable link with one of their conversations, a pop-up window appears that says: “A public link with your chat has been created.” A checkbox also appears under this message, marked “Make this chat discoverable.” In the fine print below this message, a warning appears: “Allow it to display in web searches.”
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By checking this box, users can index conversations via Google, which means Google’s web crawlers can recognize the page and qualify it to appear in search results.
back Fast Company Openai published a report that removed the feature, a company leader called it a “short-term experiment.”
Dane Stuckey, CIS officer at OpenAI, explained on X how the feature works and where it ends up going wrong.
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Even if ChatGpt users have to choose to chat to make it public, the company believes that the potential for user error is too high.
As Mashable previously reported, OpenAI needs to save user conversations (even conversations that the user has actively deleted) because from New York times. As part of this lawsuit, Openai must retain all conversations indefinitely. (This does not apply to Chatgpt Enterprise or Chatgpt Edu customers, according to Openai.)
So, while ChatGpt users can switch on the “temporary chat” feature similar to incognito mode in a web browser, your chat data is still retained.
Disclosure: Mashable’s parent company Ziff Davis filed a lawsuit against Openai in April, accusing it of infringing on Ziff Davis’ copyright in training and operating its AI systems.
