Private ChatGPT conversations leak onto Google search results
Researchers uncovered more than 500 conversations that were available via the search engine, as well as thousands more that had been archived elsewhere on the web.
This week, ChatGPT's developer OpenAI blocked web searches from collecting conversations, saying people may be accidentally sharing private information.
It came after a series of compromising conversations were discovered in Google's search results by Henk van Ess, an online researcher.
The chats involved discussion of insider trading plans and admissions of fraud, as well as attempts to plan a cyber attack against Hamas.
Other conversations appeared to involve doctors and lawyers asking for advice on their work. Another involved one user seeking to manipulate the chatbot into generating inappropriate images of children.
Conversations with chatbots such as ChatGPT are typically private, but users can share records of the conversations on social media or messaging apps by creating a hyperlink.
In some cases, OpenAI allowed shared chats to become discoverable by search engines, meaning they would show up in Google and other sites' search results.
The company said on Thursday that it had disabled the feature.
Dane Stucky, OpenAI's chief information security officer, said: '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.'
Cheating schoolchildren
However, Mr van Ess said a further 110,000 conversations could be found through the Wayback Machine, a tool from the technology non-profit the Internet Archive which stores snapshots of the web.
The discussions included an Italian lawyer looking for advice on removing native communities for an energy project in the Amazon, and an Egyptian dissident criticising the country's president.
Conversations frequently involved schoolchildren demanding that the chatbot write essays on their behalf.
The conversations are anonymous but in many cases users include personal information, either through chats or documents they have uploaded.
Sam Altman, OpenAI's chief executive, recently said that there was no legal confidentiality related to conversations with ChatGPT.
'People talk about the most personal s--- in their lives to ChatGPT. People use it – young people, especially –as a therapist, a life coach.
'If you talk to a therapist or a lawyer or a doctor about those problems, there's legal privilege for it ... We haven't figured that out yet for when you talk to ChatGPT.'
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