Shared ChatGPT conversations showed up in Google search results
What happened
A ChatGPT option to make shared chats discoverable led to thousands of conversations being indexed by Google, some containing names, CVs, mental health details and business information. OpenAI removed the feature and worked with search engines to de-index the links.
ChatGPT's share feature included an optional checkbox to make a shared chat discoverable, which allowed search engines to index it. Many users did not realise what it meant, and Fast Company found around 4,500 conversations in Google results, some containing names, CVs, mental health struggles, relationship problems and confidential work details. Anyone searching the site's share pages could browse them.
How it happened
Leaky AI product: Accidental publication. A product feature, share link or software release made private data public by mistake.
The AI involved was from OpenAI, specifically ChatGPT. The product was ChatGPT, a type of chatbot.
Impact
Data was exposed. Data involved: chat logs and personal data. The impact was confined to one organization and its users or customers. Sources give a figure of 4,500.
Severity is rated Medium, calculated from how far the incident reached and how sensitive the data was.
Was the AI at fault?
No. The failure was in the systems, settings or people around the AI, not in the model's behaviour.
Status and timeline
Confirmed by the affected organization, the AI vendor, a regulator or a named security research firm.
It became public on 31 Jul 2025.
OpenAI's chief information security officer called it a short-lived experiment that created too many chances for people to share things by accident. The company removed the discoverable option on 31 July 2025 and worked with search engines to de-index the pages that had been exposed.