OpenAI ends ChatGPT users' option to index chats on search engines
Google accounts for more than 89% of all online searches, which made private chats on ChatGPT potentially widely accessible when indexed on that search engine and others.
"This feature introduced too many opportunities for folks to accidentally share things they didn't intend to, so we're removing the option," Dan Stuckey, OpenAI chief information security officer, told PC Mag.
Bing, DuckDuckGo and other search engines will continue to index discoverable chats, but only for a while longer.
"We're also working to remove indexed content from the relevant search engines," Stuckey said.
OpenAI recently enabled the index option for private ChatGPT discussions as an experiment, Stuckey added, but that experiment is ending.
A message informed users their indexed chats were searchable on Google and other search engines, but many users did not read the message or don't understand the extent to which their conversations might be available to others.
Such conversations are accessible when affixing "site:chatgpt/share" to search queries when those conversations are indexed.
News of the indexed private conversations with ChatGPT first was reported by FastCompany on Wednesday in a story detailing Google's indexing of ChatGPT conversations.
The indexing does not provide information on respective users, but the conversations might include personal information when mentioned by the users while conversing with ChatGPT.
Many users also were unaware that sharing a conversation with someone via social apps, such as WhatsApp, when saving the URL for future use would cause Google to make it potentially widely available to millions of people.
OpenAI officials recently announced they were appealing a court order requiring the preservation of all chats that users delete after conversing with ChatGPT, Ars Technica reported.
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