Anyone who uses ChatGPT may have noticed that the side chat history is down this Tuesday morning. The measure was adopted by OpenAI after the company identified a bug that showed descriptions of third-party conversations for chatbot users.
understand the case
- On Reddit, a user posted a photo that shows descriptions of various conversations, which, according to the post, are from someone else.
- Another person reported the same issue by posting a screenshot on Twitter.
- “If you use #ChatGPT be careful! There is a risk that your chats will be shared with other users! Today I was introduced to another user’s history. I couldn’t see the content, but I could see the titles of recent chats,” the tweet reads.
If you use #ChatGPT be careful! There's a risk of your chats being shared to other users!
Today I was presented another user's chat history.
I couldn't see contents, but could see their recent chats' titles.#security #privacy #openAI #AI pic.twitter.com/DLX3CZntao— Jordan L Wheeler (@JordanLWheeler) March 20, 2023
An OpenAI spokesperson confirmed to Bloomberg that the company is aware of the issue, adding that the bug did not in fact share full transcripts of conversations, only the titles.
In the end, the issue is a reminder to be very careful with personal information shared not only with ChatGPT but with any AI-powered tool. OpenAi even warns that no user “share sensitive information in their conversations”. The company also points out that it cannot exclude specific excerpts from the chats, which can be used for ChatGPT training.
To work around the problem, OpenAI was forced to temporarily turn off ChatGPT this Monday. The service went live the same day, however, without the chat history sidebar, replaced by the message “history is temporarily unavailable”.
The company says it’s “working to restore the feature as soon as possible” in its latest update to the service’s status page. The investigation into the cause of the problem is still ongoing.
