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A “short-lived experiment” by OpenAI that allowed certain ChatGPT conversations to be indexed by Google and other search engines has been abruptly disabled, following reports that thousands of private and sensitive chats were made publicly accessible.
The discovery has raised significant privacy concerns among users and experts alike.
The issue came to light when internet users and journalists found that a simple Google site search—site:chatgpt.com/share—could reveal a treasure trove of publicly shared conversations.
While this feature was intended for collaboration and required a user to explicitly opt-in by toggling a “Make this chat discoverable” checkbox, many were seemingly unaware of the privacy implications.
Reports from publications like Fast Company identified over 4,500 such links indexed by Google, with some containing deeply personal and confidential information, including names, resumes, and emotional reflections.
OpenAI has since confirmed the removal of the feature, which they described as an experiment to “help people discover useful conversations.” In a statement, the company acknowledged that the feature “introduced too many opportunities for folks to accidentally share things they didn’t intend to.” The company stated that it is now working with search engines to remove the already indexed content and prevent future exposure.
The incident serves as a stark reminder of the complexities of data privacy in the age of AI. While shared links are a useful tool, the line between private communication and public publication can be easily blurred.
A critical detail that was not widely understood by users was that even if a conversation was deleted from their personal ChatGPT history, the public share link remained active and searchable until manually removed.
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