According to a Bloomberg article, a flaw allowed other users of OpenAI’s ChatGPT to see the titles of some users’ earlier talks with the AI chatbot. On Monday, OpenAI temporarily turned off ChatGPT while it worked to fix the problem.

While using ChatGPT, a user’s chat history is displayed on the website’s left side, allowing users to carry on earlier chats. According to OpenAI, some users of ChatGPT saw other users’ chat titles instead of their own. Bloomberg notes that it was difficult to see the content of the discussions being had by the other users.

In a tweet on Wednesday, openAI CEO said the “significant issue in ChatGPT” was the result of a “bug in an open-source library.” He confirmed that a “small percentage” of users were able to see other users’ conversation history.  It’s unclear how many people were specifically affected, but it serves as a warning to use ChatGPT and other new AI technologies carefully as many of them are still in the testing or development stages. OpenAI warns users not to “reveal any sensitive information in your interactions” in a FAQ regarding ChatGPT since it is unable to remove specific prompts from a user’s history.

When ChatGPT was launched by OpenAI at the end of last year, it was estimated that 100 million active users had signed up for the service by January. It was followed by an explosion of new AI products and services from organisations like Microsoft, Google, and Adobe. On Monday night, ChatGPT was back up, but OpenAI stated on a status page that it was still working to fully restore users’ chat histories.

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