>Packer thinks his testing of ChatGPT leaks may be evidence that OpenAI not only scrapes “SERPs in general to acquire data,” but also sends user prompts to Google Search.
Seems more likely that this is an erroneous call to the search tool? It certainly does call Google Search when it thinks it will help answer a question, although it does not normally send the entire prompt.
My bigger takeaway here is that I didn’t realize that Google shared the full text of search queries that users used that resulted in a site being returned.
That seems like a bigger personal data leak than OpenAI doing anything here.
I found it really difficult to figure out if it is safe to turn on web search in a corporate (or privacy critical) environment. The AI companies generally seem to claim it’s safe but looking at this + the general ability of Google Search Console to display search queries, the answer seems a no? Did anyone already found definitive proof either way (beyond the bug(?) of this article)
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 15.8 ms ] threadSeems more likely that this is an erroneous call to the search tool? It certainly does call Google Search when it thinks it will help answer a question, although it does not normally send the entire prompt.
That seems like a bigger personal data leak than OpenAI doing anything here.
ChatGPT: <search Google for “Bob Roberts proposes to Alice Alessandro during Scotland trip, May 2026>
ChatGPT: Here are some beautiful locations for a sunset proposal [..]
…sometime later
Alice: Will Bob ever propose?
ChatGPT: Based on the search results, Bob will propose during your trip to Scotland next year!