OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has warned that while users often reveal the most personal details of their lives to ChatGPT, their interactions lack privacy protections and could potentially be produced for lawsuits or other legal reasons.
During an episode of ‘This Past Weekend’ podcast with Theo Von, Altman noted that though interactions between patients and doctors or clients and lawyers are protected by privilege — meaning they cannot often be used against an individual in court — this is not the case for a person’s interactions with ChatGPT. He emphasised that the policy framework for this protection is lacking, and that it needs to be urgently addressed.
“And right now, if you talk to a therapist or a lawyer or a doctor about those problems, there’s legal privilege for it. Like, there’s doctor-patient confidentiality, there’s legal confidentiality, whatever. And, we haven’t figured that out yet for when you talk to ChatGPT,” Altman said during the podcast, adding that OpenAI could be forced to produce such evidence even if he disagreed with the mandate.
Altman observed that young people “especially” used ChatGPT as a life coach or a therapist. He advocated for a human-AI chatbot privacy standard comparable to that existing between a patient and their therapist.
OpenAI has in the past criticised the New York Times, claiming that as part of its lawsuit against the AI startup, the media company “asked the court to force us to retain all user content indefinitely going forward..”
