ChatGPT is an AI-backed chatbot from OpenAI, an American AI company. Although it can generate texts in a life-like way, it’s not wise to trust ChatGPT as an advisor or a friend. New technology brings new privacy and security issues, and OpenAI’s AI chatbot is no exception.
While other tech giants, including Microsoft and Google, have jumped on the AI-chatbot bandwagon with their Bing AI and Google Bard bots, Samsung recently banned ChatGPT and other AI tools raising security concerns. Interestingly, OpenAI uses publicly available text on the Internet to train its LLM (Large Language Model). However, they also learn from the sentences or phrases shared with ChatGPT.
When using ChatGPT it’s wise to exercise caution. All conversations shared with the chatbot are saved while their use can be done in the future. Moreover, some governments are reportedly planning to take a strong stance against the process ChatGPT adopts to collect user data, with Germany possibly even banning the chatbot.
Fortunately, there are ways to protect one’s online privacy and security when conversing with ChatGPT. To activate the model’s incognito mode, users just have to open ChatGPT and go to the Settings section where they can turn on the “Chat History & Training” toggle switch to prevent the AI bot from learning about them. With the incognito mode, conversation logs will be deleted as soon as the browser tab is closed.
However, ChatGPT’s support documentation urges users to avoid sharing any sensitive information with it. And other AI generative chatbots like Google Bard have come under scrutiny for spreading misinformation. To protect oneself from any of these issues, it is important to double-check all sources cited by the chatbot and manually delete one’s chat history.
Moreover, if users want to use any browser or an app extension built on top of ChatGPT, is important to read the privacy policy and terms and conditions, as well as check out all the permissions it requires. Above all, share as little information as possible with the AI-bot. Lastly, make sure to find out more details about the developer behind a ChatGPT tool or extension to make sure they are legit.
