Soon after creating a buzz around the search market, OpenAI pulled down the feature of ChatGPT conversations’ discoverability on search engines. The step has been addressed as a ‘short-lived experiment’ and was disabled due to raising privacy concerns of the users.
OpenAI is reportedly taking initiatives to remove chats and conversations that have already been indexed for search engines. Dane Stuckey, OpenAI’s Chief Information Security Officer (CISO), has confirmed on X about the disablement of the discoverability feature of ChatGPT conversations.
Dane further highlighted an opt-in option that users needed to enable if they wished to share their chats with the search engines. However, due to limited awareness, users ended up enabling their conversations with ChatGPT to be discoverable by search engines.
Under the indexability feature, more than 4,500 ChatGPT conversations got indexed on Google Search. The conversations even carried personal information of the users, including names, contact details, locations, and more. As a result, search engines, like Google, indexed sensitive user information from the conversations on ChatGPT.
Users assumed that deleting conversations on ChatGPT might restrict search engines from indexing those chats. However, deleting the history did not remove the share link from search engines.
Was it a Planned Step or a Mistake?
While setting new ranking benchmarks on the search, the exposure of users’ personal conversations with ChatGPT also imposed significant privacy concerns. The search results contributed to increasing tension among the ChatGPT users globally.
On the other hand, it provided a fresh perspective for SEO experts and content creators to optimize their webpages with information that people actually seek on traditional and generative search engines.
Although OpenAI considered it a short-lived experiment, experts around the globe criticized the act as a mistake, as OpenAI did not hesitate to expose personal conversations, including sensitive user data.
Undoubtedly, OpenAI prioritizes security and privacy; nevertheless, such situations are a reminder that users need to reconsider when sharing personal information with search engines.
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Also Read: ChatGPT Search vs. Google Search: How do they differ?