Security expert explains how to prevent your ChatGPT chats from appearing on Google

If you think your conversations with ChatGPT are private, think again.

Not only are your chats used to train the AI, your conversations could now be showing up on Google search too.

This could be anywhere from a little bit embarrassing to an absolute disaster, depending on what you actually use the chatbot for, but fortunately it can be prevented.

A cyber security expert has revealed how to check whether your chat log is available to every Tom, Dick and Harry, and what you can do about it if it is.

Caitlin Sarian, who posts a wealth of information about how to stay safe on the internet from her handle @cybersecuritygirl, says the first thing you need to do is change your settings within ChatGPT.

"The first and the easiest is to turn off share links in ChatGPT. Go to settings, then data controls then chat history and training and disable sharing to prevent chats from being indexed," she explained in a recent Instagram video.

The second thing, Caitlin explained, is 'just to manually delete the sensitive chats, so you can hover over any old chat and click the trash icon'.

But, if you want to check whether any of your chats have already made it into the public domain, there's one thing you can do to see what's already out there.

"Google your name, plus this ["site:chat.openai.com"]," she explained. "This checks if any of your chats are being indexed right now and if they show up, delete those links and request removal from Google search."

Caitlin concluded her video by issuing a stark warning to anyone who puts sensitive information into AI chatbots like ChatGPT.

"This is your reminder that anything you type into AI can be stored," she said, "so treat it like you would a public forum even if it feels private."

Meanwhile, the CEO of OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, has called for greater legal protections around chat logs.

Sam Altman said that ChatGPT conversations should be given the same privilege as conversations between patient and therapist, from a legal perspective, given the increasing number of young people turning to the software for personal support.

"So, if you go talk to ChatGPT about your most sensitive stuff and then there's like a lawsuit or whatever, we could be required to produce that, and I think that's very screwed up," he told podcast host Theo Von in an episode of This Past Weekend.

"Right now, if you talk to a therapist or a lawyer or a doctor about those problems, there's like legal privilege for it — there's doctor-patient confidentiality, there's legal confidentiality. We haven't figured that out yet for when you talk to ChatGPT."