Thousands of user conversations with Elon Musk's AI chatbot Grok have been exposed in search engine results and seemingly without users' knowledge. When Grok users press a button to share a transcript of their conversation, unique links are created. But along with sharing the chat with the intended recipient, the button also appears to make the chats searchable online. A Google search on Thursday revealed it had indexed nearly 300,000 Grok conversations.
The appearance of Grok chats in search engine results was first reported by Forbes, which counted more than 370,000 user conversations on Google. Among chat transcripts seen were examples of Musk's chatbot being asked to create a secure password, provide meal plans for weight loss and answer detailed questions about medical conditions.
Some indexed transcripts also showed users' attempts to test the limits on what Grok would say or do. In one example seen, the chatbot provided detailed instructions on how to make a Class A drug in a lab.
OpenAI recently rowed back an "experiment" which saw ChatGPT conversations appear in search engine results when shared by users. An OpenAI spokesperson said at the time that it had been "testing ways to make it easier to share helpful conversations, while keeping users in control".
They said user chats were private by default and users had to explicitly opt-in to sharing them.
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