ChatGPT bug exposed chat history to other users, here is what OpenAI said

By Abhik SenguptaIf you have been using ChatGPT, you may have noticed that the chat history was unavailable for the last few hours/days. That’s because its developer, OpenAI, disabled the option after discovering a critical bug that caused a terrible security issue. According to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, a small percentage of users were able to see the titles of other users’ conversation history. Altman states that the bug (now fixed) resided in an “open-source library”. He adds that the company feels ” awful about this” and will release a detailed report later.

After discovering the issue, the company disabled chat history, though outage tracker Downdetector highlights that the platform suffered a brief outage. Users were unable to use the AI-powered chatbot around midnight (March 23), according to Downdetector’s outage map.

Meanwhile, a user spotted the bug and posted pictures on Twitter. The user (@JordanLWheeler) said that ChatGPT users should be “careful” as there’s a risk of chats being “shared to other users”. He adds, “Today I was presented another user’s chat history. I couldn’t see contents, but could see their recent chats’ titles.” The user notes that ChatGPT Plus members also could not access chat history after the company disabled the option.

Bloomberg, citing an OpenAI official, states that “only brief descriptive titles” have been exposed while the full transcripts of conversations remain safe. However, readers must note that sharing confidential data with any chatbot is inadvisable.

In fact, OpenAI’s FAQ suggests that users must not “share any sensitive information in your conversations” since it can not delete specific prompts from your history. The FAQ also points out that ChatGPT is not connected to the internet and can occasionally produce incorrect answers. According to the site, the chatbot “has limited knowledge of world and events after 2021 and may also occasionally produce harmful instructions or biased content.”

ChatGPT has witnessed meteoric growth since its public launch late last year. The AI-powered chatbot is also the fastest-growing platform in the world. A report claimed ChatGPT clocked 13 million users per day in January. The platform achieved a 100 million user mark in two months after its public launch, while other popular social media apps like TikTok and Instagram took years to achieve.

The growth is credited to ChatGPT’s simple interface, impressive performance, and free access. Customers can get a subscription for improved performance. However, if you want a similar efficient performance, you can try Microsoft Bing, which is powered by GPT-4, the underlying tech of ChatGPT Plus.