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ChatGPT therapy chats are not private, warns OpenAI CEO Sam Altman
Sam Altman warned ChatGPT chats are not legally protected like therapy sessions, and deleted chats may still be saved if required for legal or security reasons.
More people are using ChatGPT like a therapist, but that doesn’t mean it’s private. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman says those kinds of chats don’t have the same legal protections you get with real therapists, doctors, or lawyers.
Altman told podcaster Theo Von, “So if you go talk to ChatGPT about your most sensitive stuff and then there's like a lawsuit or whatever, we could be required to produce that, and I think that's very screwed up.”
He went on, “Right now, if you talk to a therapist or a lawyer or a doctor about those problems, there's like legal privilege for it — there's doctor-patient confidentiality, there's legal confidentiality,” according to Business Insider report. “We haven't figured that out yet for when you talk to ChatGPT.”
Altman said there should be the “same concept of privacy for your conversations with AI that we do with a therapist” and that it should be “addressed with some urgency.”
Youngsters turning to ChatGPT for therapy
He said a growing number of people — especially younger users — are turning to ChatGPT for therapy, life advice, or help with relationships. Altman said, “No one had to think about that even a year ago, and now I think it's this huge issue of like, 'How are we gonna treat the laws around this?'”
Unlike end-to-end encrypted apps like WhatsApp or Signal, OpenAI can read your conversations with ChatGPT. Employees sometimes look at chats to improve the AI or to watch for misuse.
OpenAI says deleted chats from Free, Plus, and Pro users are wiped within 30 days unless they’re legally required to keep them for "legal or security reasons."
Back in June, The New York Times and other media outlets asked a court to force OpenAI to save all user chats, even deleted ones, as part of a copyright lawsuit. OpenAI is now appealing that court order.
