Open AI is a San Francisco-based artificial intelligence research laboratory and technology company. Founded in 2015 by renowned scientists and technologists, Open AI is dedicated to exploring fundamental questions, which include developing advanced technologies to benefit all of humanity. On March 20, Open AI revealed, through a blog post, that their popular AI chatbot, ChatGTP, suffered an outage due to a bug that exposed users’ credit card details for a short period of time.
The company CEO, Sam Altman, promptly issued a statement on the matter, in which he acknowledged the failure to protect users’ sensitive information. Altman expressed regret and remorse on the security flaw, but was quick to assure subscribers that the vulnerability exposed only the last four digits of their credit card numbers and no other information. Open AI promised that the bug had been fixed and the chatbot would soon be brought back online.
Subscribers who use ChatGPT Plus, those subscribers that pay $20 per month for added benefits, were the ones affected by the data leak. Only 1.2% of the Plus users, who were active within a nine hour window were exposed to the last four digits of their credit card number, as well as both their first and last name, as well as their payment address. Thankfully, Open AI clarified that full credit card numbers were not visible during the data leak.
Since then, Open AI has issued an apology to the ChatGPT community for not fulfilling its promise to protect users’ privacy. Working to rebuild trust, Open AI has vowed to clean up the security measure and to update Plus subscribers on any new developments.
