Opinion Recently, OpenAI ChatGPT users were shocked – shocked, I tell you! – to discover that their searches were appearing in Google search. You morons! What do you think AI chatbots are doing? Doing all your homework for free or a mere $20 a month? I think not!
When you ask an AI chatbot for an answer, whether it's about the role of tariffs in decreasing prices (spoiler: tariffs increase them,); whether your girlfriend is really that into you; or, my particular favorite, "How to Use a Microwave Without Summoning Satan," OpenAI records your questions. And, until recently, Google kept the records for anyone who is search savvy to find them.
It's not like OpenAI didn't tell you that if you shared your queries with other people or saved them for later use, it wasn't copying them down and making them potentially searchable. The company explicitly said this was happening.
The warning read: "When users clicked 'Share,' they were given the option to 'Make this chat discoverable.' Under that, in smaller text, was the explanation that you were allowing it to be 'shown in web searches'."
But, like all those hundreds of lines of end-user license agreements (EULAs) that we all check with the "Agree" button, it appears that most people didn't read them. Or, think it through. Pick one. Maybe both. Hanlon's Razor says it best: "Never ascribe to malice what can be explained by stupidity."
OpenAI's chief information security officer, Dane Stuckey, then tweeted that OpenAI had removed the option because it "introduced too many opportunities for folks to accidentally share things they didn't intend to. The company is also "working to remove indexed content from the relevant search engines." It appears OpenAI has been successful.
So, everything's good now, right? Right? Right!? Oh, you poor dear child, of course not.
For the moment, no one can Google their way to embarrassing questions you've asked OpenAI. That doesn't mean that queries you've been asking may not appear from a data breach or somehow resurface in a Google or AI search. After all, OpenAI has been legally required to retain all your queries, including those you've deleted. Or, well, that you thought you deleted anyway.
Oh? You didn't know that? OpenAI is currently under a federal court order, as part of an ongoing copyright lawsuit, that forces it to preserve all user conversations from ChatGPT on its consumer-facing tiers: Free, Plus, Pro, and Team. The court order also means that "Temporary Chat" sessions, which were previously erased after use, are now being stored. There's nothing "Temporary" about them now.
See, this is why you need to follow me so you can keep up to date with this stuff. While I don't think that what you ask ChatGPT is as big a deal as someone who goes by "signull" on Twitter does when they said, "the contents of ChatGPT often are more sensitive than a bank account," it still matters a lot.
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