OpenAI: A Bug That Could Leak Sensitive User Data in ChatGPT

Recently, ChatGPT users posted screenshots on Reddit showing their sidebar displaying previous chat histories of other users, with only the conversation titles visible.

Responding to this issue, as reported by Engadget on Saturday (25/3/2023), OpenAI took ChatGPT, its AI chatbot, offline for nearly 10 hours to investigate.

The investigation revealed a deeper security issue, where the chat history bug might also potentially expose the personal data of 1.2 percent of ChatGPT Plus subscribers (a $20 per month subscription package).

"A few hours before we took ChatGPT offline on Monday, some users were able to see the first and last names of other active users, email addresses, payment addresses, only the last four digits of the credit card number, and the credit card expiration date. The full credit card number was not disclosed," the OpenAI team wrote.

This bug has been patched for the faulty library, identified by OpenAI as the open-source Redis client library, redis-py.

The company has taken additional steps to prevent this from happening again in the future, including tightening library call checks.

"Programmatically checking logs to ensure that all messages are only available to the correct users and increasing logging to identify when issues are occurring and fully confirming that the issue has stopped," OpenAI explained.

The company also stated that it has contacted some ChatGPT users who were affected by this issue.

Bill Gates compared the development of AI-powered ChatGPT to the emergence of personal computers. According to him, this new technology will allow users to feel like they have a "white-collar worker" as their personal assistant.

As reported by NY Post on Saturday (25/3/2023), Bill Gates revealed that the development of AI is as fundamental as the creation of microprocessors, computers, the internet, and phones.

"This will change the way people work, learn, travel, receive healthcare, and communicate with each other," Gates wrote in a blog post uploaded on Tuesday (21/3/2023), titled "The Age of AI has Begun."

Gates also predicted that the entire industry would be oriented towards AI technology development. Even business companies will distinguish themselves by how well they use AI chatbots.

"While humans are still better than GPT in many ways, there are many jobs where this ability is not much used," wrote the Microsoft co-founder.

Recently, Microsoft has poured billions of dollars into ChatGPT and partnered with OpenAI to add this feature to its search engine, Bing.

Gates revealed that he had met with the OpenAI team since 2016 and was impressed with their steady progress. For information, OpenAI is an AI research firm that launched the ChatGPT technology and is based in Silicon Valley.

In his article last year, Gates challenged OpenAI to train artificial intelligence to pass the Advanced Placement biology test. Astonishingly, a few months later, ChatGPT answered 59 out of 0 questions in the written test.

"I know I just saw the most important technological progress since the graphical user interface," wrote Gates.

Gates continued that, with the decreasing cost of computing power, ChatGPT's ability to express ideas would be more like a white-collar worker who is available to assist users in various tasks.

One month after integrating AI chatbot ala ChatGPT into Bing, Microsoft claims there has been a spike in the platform's search engine.

As mentioned by Yusuf Mehdi, VP for Modern Life, Search, and Devices at Microsoft, through the official Microsoft Bing blog. He mentioned that Bing users currently reach more than 100 million daily active users.

"This is a very surprising number, but we are fully aware that we remain asmall player with a small and low single-digit market share. Nonetheless, happy to be at the party!" he wrote.

As reported by Engadget on Saturday (11/3/2023), Mehdi stated that after they released the latest version of Microsoft Bing, there were users who had never used it before, now relying on the platform.

He also noted that one-third of the daily active users of the Bing search engine are new users.

In conclusion, the bug in ChatGPT's chat history feature is a serious issue that could potentially expose sensitive user data. OpenAI has taken necessary steps to patch the bug and prevent it from happening in the future. On the other hand, Bill Gates sees AI-powered ChatGPT as a fundamental technology that will change the way people work, learn, travel, receive healthcare, and communicate with each other. The integration of ChatGPT into Bing has resulted in a significant increase in daily active users of the search engine, indicating the potential of AI-powered chatbots in enhancing user experience.