Private chats can be found on Google: Openai takes back function

Private chats at Chatgpt can be shared. This basically only happens at the user’s request and on purpose. So far, however, the function has been kept an option that apparently often misunderstood. As a result, numerous conversations with the AI Chatbot have been publicly found. Who knows and knew how to do this could easily search for people or topics on Google. Chats should also appear that dealt with murder, sexual preferences and other explosive content.

To share a conversation, you had to create a public link. Anyone who has this can also read the chat. So far so well and not yet found on Google. However, there was also the selection: “Make this chat discoverable” or in German “make this chat to be found”. Some people have misunderstood that and thought that you have to put the hook so that the link to work works. Instead, they made the content of the conversation freely available – also for search engines.

So it is not a malfunction or even a leak, but rather a misunderstanding. Openai now withdraws and makes the selection disappear. This has now announced that at Xenai, Ciso at Openai. Stuckey also explains that the function is supposed to help people find helpful conversations from other people. Which conversations with a chatbot should inspire exactly other people remains open. In the comments on the X contribution, someone writes that it was a great opportunity for Geo-Generative Engine Optimization, the new counterpart to SEO, Search Engine Optimization.

But Openaai did not apparently not find enough use. “For us, security and data protection are our top priority, and we will continue to work to take this into account as best as possible in our products and functions,” writes Stuckey. It remains unclear what happens to the chats that can already be found publicly. Basically, the responsibility for them is probably the people who have set the hook. Potentially, Openai could all hide them again.