OpenAI Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Sam Altman has announced that the privacy of ChatGPT users’ data is not protected under any legal safeguards at the moment, so chats with the AI may be used as evidence in court.
OpenAI CEO claimed a podcast ”This Past Weekend podcast” hosted by comedian Theo Von, where he was invited as a guest.
Key Concerns:
He expressed concern over how much personal and sensitive information users are feeding into the chatbot, particularly young people who tend to depend on it for emotional advice.
“People share the most intimate shit in their lives with ChatGPT. People use it, young people in particular, use it as a therapist, a life coach; having these relationship issues and asking ‘what should I do?’” OpenAI CEO added.
Mr. Altman pointed out that, unlike interactions with health or legal experts, the chats users have with ChatGPT are not covered by any present-day privacy laws.
“And right now, if you talk to a therapist or a lawyer or a doctor about those problems, there’s legal privilege for it. There’s doctor-patient confidentiality, there’s legal confidentiality, whatever.
“And we haven’t developed that yet for when you speak to ChatGPT,” Altman clarified. He warned that this uncertainty in the law could have grave consequences.
“If you go chat with ChatGPT about the most personal things and then there’s a lawsuit or something, we might be required to generate that. “If someone has shared their deepest personal problems with ChatGPT, and that ends up in court, we might be forced to share that. And that’s a serious issue,” the CEO cautioned.
The OpenAI leader underscored the imperative of addressing this ChatGPT user data privacy vulnerability in AI interactions.
“I believe that’s really messed up. I believe we ought to have the same notion of privacy for your chat with AI that we have with a therapist or whatever, and nobody needed to consider that even a year ago,” Altman added.