- OpenAI has removed a feature allowing ChatGPT conversations to be indexed by the Google search engine. The action comes following a growing number of complaints about user privacy. The company called it a “short-lived experiment.”
OpenAI’s “short-lived experiment” with letting people share their ChatGPT conversations with Google’s search engine has come to a close.
The company has removed the feature after a report in Fast Company found thousands of conversations with the chatbot in search results on Google. While those did not have directly identifiable information, several did contain specific details that would aid in discovering who the human half of the conversation was.
OpenAI’s chief information security officer, Dane Stuckey, in a post on Twitter/X announced the feature’s removal last week.
“This was a short-lived experiment to help people discover useful conversations,” he wrote. “Ultimately we think this feature introduced too many opportunities for folks to accidentally share things they didn’t intend to, so we’re removing the option. We’re also working to remove indexed content from the relevant search engines…Security and privacy are paramount for us, and we’ll keep working to maximally reflect that in our products and features.”
While users had to choose to make the chatbot chats shareable via a pop-up window, and OpenAI initially said it felt the labeling on the feature was “sufficiently clear,” there were some concerns raised in the Fast Company story that people could have made the information sharable in order to forward it only to friends or loved ones.
The change in discoverability comes as OpenAI says ChatGPT is set to hit 700 million weekly active users this week. That’s up from 500 million in March and quadruple what its usage was just one year ago.
OpenAI secured $8.3 billion in funding last week and is expecting revenues to top $20 billion by the end of 2025.