ChatGPT conversations are reportedly showing up in Google search results if users of the artificial intelligence chatbot create links to share those conversations.
A Google search using part of the shared link from OpenAI’s ChatGPT discovers these conversations, Fast Company reported Thursday (July 31).
The publication found that more than 4,500 conversations showed up in these search results. Many of these conversations were personal, and some included information like users’ names and locations, if users included it in the chat, according to the report.
An OpenAI spokesperson said in the report: “ChatGPT conversations are private unless you choose to share them. Creating a link to share your chat also includes an option to make it visible in web searches. Shared chats are only visible in Google search if users explicitly select this option.”
A ChatGPT FAQ page about shared links said this feature allows users to share the conversation with friends, colleagues and collaborators; to make it available to be indexed by search engines; or to share it to popular social networks.
The page added that “shared links are not enabled to show up in public search results on the internet by default. You can manually enable the link to be indexed by search engines when sharing.”
OpenAI said in a June blog post that lawsuits may weaken its privacy protections.
Reached by PYMNTS, Google said in an email that its search engine, and others, index pages that are on the open web, including the content mentioned in Thursday’s Fast Company article.
Google offers tools that site owners can use to tell its search engine not to include pages in its search results.
In another, separate case, the BBC reported in June that some users of Meta AI may have been inadvertently posting their chats on a public feed.
Meta said chats are private by default, and a pop-up message cautions users when they share a post that the chat will be “public and visible to everyone,” but the nature of some chats that were made public suggests that users may not have understood this, the BBC report said.