Open AI says the data is used to train the AI model and improve its responses, but the terms allow the company to share your personal information with affiliates, vendors, service providers, and law enforcement. “So it’s hard to know where your data will end up,” Love says.
OpenAI’s privacy policy states that ChatGPT collects information for the purpose of creating an account or communicating with the company, says Bharath Thota, a data scientist and director of analytics solutions at consulting firm Kearney, who advises companies on how to manage AI data and exploit it to generate recent revenue streams.
Part of this data collection includes full names, account credentials, payment card information and transaction history, he says. “Personal information may also be stored, especially if images are uploaded as part of prompts. Similarly, if a user chooses to connect to any of the company’s social media pages, such as Facebook, LinkedIn or Instagram, personal information may be collected if they have shared their contact information.”
OpenAI uses consumer data like other gigantic tech and social media companies, but it doesn’t sell ads. Instead, it provides tools — an critical distinction, says Jeff Schwartzentruber, senior machine learning scientist at security firm eSentire. “User input isn’t used directly as a commodity. Instead, it’s used to improve services that benefit the user — but also increase the value of OpenAI’s intellectual property.”
Privacy Control
Since its launch in 2020, and amid criticism and privacy scandals, OpenAI has introduced tools and controls you can exploit to lock down your data. OpenAI says it is “committed to protecting people’s privacy.”
In the case of ChatGPT, OpenAI says it understands that users may not want their information used to improve models, so it provides them with ways to do so. manage your data. ChatGPT Free and Plus users can easily control whether they contribute to future model improvements their settings“, the company writes on its website, adding that it does not provide training on API, ChatGPT Enterprise and ChatGPT Team customer data by default.
“We provide ChatGPT users with a range of privacy controls, including an easy way to opt out of training our AI models and a temporary chat mode that automatically deletes chats as they happen,” OpenAI spokesperson Taya Christianson told WIRED.
The company says it does not collect personal data to train its models and does not use public information on the internet to build profiles of people, target them, or advertise to them — or sell user data.
OpenAI does not train models on audio clips from voice chats—unless you choose to share your audio “to improve the voice chat experience for everyone,” as stated in the Voice Chat FAQ section on the OpenAI website.
“If you share your audio with us, we can use the audio from your voice chats to train our models,” Open AI says in its voice chat FAQ. Transcribed chats, meanwhile, can be used to train models, depending on your choices and plan.