ChatGPT bug: users saw other people’s conversations

OpenAI has fixed a bug in its AI chatbot that caused some users to see the message headers of other users. “feel terrible about it”

The CEO of OpenAI, Sam Altman, revealed that a discovered bug allowed some users of the popular chatbot ChatGPT See other people’s messages.

“We had a significant issue with ChatGPT due to a bug in an open source library for which a patch was released that we have just finished validating,” tweeted Altman. “A small percentage of users were able to see the headers of other users’ call history.”

Some users reported seeing messages from others as early as Monday. One Reddit user reported spotting previously unseen chats in the sidebar, including conversations titled “Xi Jingping’s Six Principles” and “Developing Chinese Socialism.” Another person on Twitter shared a screenshot of his ChatGPT, showing chat headers from conversations he never had.

OpenAI temporarily disabled the chatbot on Monday after the company received reports of other people’s chat history, a company spokesperson told Bloomberg. “We feel terrible about this,” Altman said in a tweet on Tuesday.

we had a significant issue in ChatGPT due to a bug in an open source library, for which a fix has now been released and we have just finished validating.

a small percentage of users were able to see the titles of other users’ conversation history.

we feel awful about this.

— Sam Altman (@sama) March 22, 2023

After the issue was fixed, Altman said users would not be able to see chat history for ChatGPT conversations that took place between 1:00 a.m. and 10:00 a.m. PT on Monday, March 20.

ChatGPT exploded very quickly shortly after its launch in November. The tool allows users to Type instructions and receive human responses using a large language model, powered by massive amounts of data. People use it to write school papers, song lyrics and even create lines of code for software. By January, two months after its launch, ChatGPT had amassed about 100 million active users, becoming the fastest-growing consumer app in history, according to a UBS note published last week. In comparison, TikTok took nine months to reach 100 million users, while Instagram only achieved the same popularity after two and a half years.