The US tech giant, OpenAI, has removed a feature from its artificial intelligence (AI) ChatGPT that allowed its users to search engines like Google. Citing unintended privacy risks, the firm has taken this initiative to remove the feature from ChatGPT.
OpenAI has announced the decision hours after reports highlighted that shared chat links, accessible via the “https://chatgpt.com/share” domain, could reveal personal details when indexed.
OpenAI’s Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) DANE has stated in his X post that this feature was a short-lived experiment to help people discover useful conversations. This feature required users to opt in, first by picking a chat to share, then by clicking a checkbox for it to be shared with search engines. However, the chats were not public unless users chose to share them by creating a link.
Some users were unaware that these shared links could appear in search engine results, potentially revealing private details such as resumes or personal questions they had asked the AI.
OpenAI emphasized that shared chats excluded users’ names and custom instructions, but the experiment still “introduced too many opportunities for folks to accidentally share things they didn’t intend to.”
The problem is similar to issues with Google Drive, where links to publicly shared documents on reliable websites can index them. Google clarified that search engines do not control the content that publishers decide to make public, which means that website owners are responsible for their indexing decisions.
OpenAI’s move underscores growing concerns about balancing user privacy with the accessibility of AI-driven content, as the company refines its approach to sharing features while prioritizing data protection.
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