People’s interaction with ChatGPT could be used in court against them – CEO Sam Altman

• The company noted that there are legal pitfalls that people who turn to ChatGPT for guidance and emotional support may fall into without knowing

ChatGPT users who feed their personal information to the Artificial Intelligence chatbot could be unknowingly compromising their own privacy and safety, OpenAI has said.

The company noted that there are legal pitfalls that people who turn to ChatGPT for guidance and emotional support may fall into without knowing.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman made this known while speaking on a recent episode of This Past Weekend with Theo Von.

Altman raised concerns about the lack of legal safeguards around AI interactions, especially as more users share personal and somewhat confidential details of their lives with the AI chatbot.

He noted that while professionals like therapists and lawyers are bound by an oath of secrecy and can’t reveal what a client shares with them to a third party, ChatGPT does not provide that kind of social and legal protection

“People talk about the most personal sh** in their lives to ChatGPT,” Altman said. “People use it — young people especially — as a therapist, a life coach; having these relationship problems and [asking] ‘what should I do?’ And right now, if you talk to a therapist or a lawyer or a doctor about those problems, there’s legal privilege for it… And we haven’t figured that out yet for when you talk to ChatGPT.”

Altman underscored the danger this poses, particularly in legal situations. Without established privacy laws for AI interactions, companies like OpenAI could be compelled to hand over user conversations during lawsuits or investigations.

“I think that’s very screwed up,” Altman said. “I think we should have the same concept of privacy for your conversations with AI that we do with a therapist or whatever — and no one had to think about that even a year ago.”

Beyond the courtroom and legal framework, the lack of clear privacy protections is already influencing the way people use AI as more people restrict their use to basic enquiries on general subjects.

Podcast host Theo Von admitted to Altman that he doesn’t use ChatGPT much because of privacy concerns. Altman responded, “I think it makes sense… to really want the privacy clarity before you use [ChatGPT] a lot — like the legal clarity.”