Catastrophe for ChatGPT users yesterday: the chatbot was inaccessible for long hours following a bug that undermined the privacy of its users. Indeed, for a time, the latter had access to the history of the conversations of complete strangers, more precisely the title of these conversations.
Several months after its deployment, the enthusiasm around ChatGPT has still not died down. Every day, several thousand Internet users connect to have a conversation with the chatbot, ask it questions or ask it to perform tasks for them. Inevitably, these are all data recovered and stored by OpenAI, which would certainly wreak havoc if they were revealed in broad daylight.
Yet this is (almost) what happened yesterday. Indeed, at the end of the afternoon, warning messages, half amused, half dismayed, began to spread on social networks. Obviously, users had access to the conversation history of other strangers, in the sidebar traditionally provided for this purpose. Suffice to say that for the respect of confidentiality, we will come back.
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ChatGPT bug exposes users’ chat history
More precisely, indiscreet users could consult the titles of the conversations which, if they do not reveal the entirety of the exchanges with the chatbot, already make it possible to have an overview of the requests made to it by other people. So, hacking or simple bug? According to the information communicated by OpenAI, in the evening, it would rather be the second option.
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Faced with the urgency of the situation, the firm did not hesitate to put its chatbot offline for several hours, in order to limit the leak of personal data. Finally, the tool reappeared at the beginning of the evening, however without the possibility of accessing its conversation history. “We are working to restore this functionality as soon as possible”indicates the platform, which was later confirmed by an OpenAI spokesperson to our colleagues at Bloomberg.
Source: Bloomberg