People often tell AI bots their deepest, darkest secrets, thinking that they are completely safe and secure. Well, as it turns out, some ChatGPT conversations were popping up in Google search results. Yep, if someone used the right search filter, they could find links to real chats people had with the chatbot. This was thanks to a feature that let users create public shareable links of their convos. Harmless in theory, but some of those chats ended up way more visible than intended.
This was first spotted by Fast Company, an online news platform that ran a few tests and managed to surface over 4,500 shared conversations. While most of these didn’t reveal anything super personal, a few definitely did. A user asked ChatGPT to rewrite their resume—and it had just enough info to trace their LinkedIn profile.
So… how did this even happen?
According to OpenAI, this all came from an experimental feature that was quietly being tested with a small group of users. It let people manually share conversations by generating a public link. The feature wasn’t turned on by default—you had to opt in and choose to share a chat. But even then, once those links were shared online (on forums, socials, or wherever), they were picked up by search engines.
OpenAI’s Chief Information Security Officer, Dane Stuckey, admitted the interface could’ve made things clearer. A lot of users probably didn’t realise just how public those “shared” links could get.
What’s OpenAI doing now?
After the story went viral, OpenAI pulled the plug on the feature completely. Stuckey said they shut it down because it opened the door for people to unintentionally overshare stuff they didn’t want public. The team is now working with search engines like Google to get all those indexed chat links removed.
At the end of the day, this wasn’t a data breach or a hack. But it is a reminder that sharing anything online—even from a chatbot—can sometimes go way more public than you expect. For now, ChatGPT share links are offline, and OpenAI says it’s doubling down on making privacy a bigger priority.
