ChatGPT bug results in breach of personal user data

By Al Mayadeen English
Source: Agencies
25 Mar 15:00

A ChatGPT breach allows users to see other users' full name, history, email addresses, and most billing information.

A smartphone with a displayed ChatGPT logo is placed on a computer motherboard in this illustration taken February 23, 2023 (Reuters).

There has been a breach of personal user data of ChatGPT, the artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot, as a result of a bug that was investigated and found by the chatbot's developer OpenAI, according to a statement released on Saturday.

Users, on Monday, reported widespread malfunctions with the chatbot.

In the US, complaints surpassed 1,000. Disruptions have also been reported by users across Canada, the UK, and other countries.

"We took ChatGPT offline earlier this week due to a bug in an open-source library which allowed some users to see titles from another active user’s chat history," the company revealed in a statement, highlighting that the bug is now fixed.

It was possible to see another active user's first and last name, email, payment address, the last four numbers of a credit card, and its expiration date hours before the firm pulled ChatGPT offline, the statement read.

The data leak affected a "very modest" number of users, which did not exceed around 1.2% of ChatGPT members overall, according to the company.

GPT-4 update places ChatGPT on the course of becoming more 'human'

Earlier this month, and prior to the breach, OpenAI released on March 19 an update of its AI technology that it said would be safer and more accurate than its predecessor.

Ever since ChatGPT entered the scene in late November, GPT-4 was widely awaited. ChatGPT wowed its users with its capabilities that were originally based on an older version of OpenAI's technology.

"We've created GPT-4, the latest milestone in OpenAI's effort in scaling up deep learning," a company blog said, adding that the AI technology "exhibits human-level performance" on some professional and academic tasks.

The company issued a statement saying the model is more creative and collaborative than ever before as it would solve complex problems with greater accuracy.

With its new update, text responses will become more accurate. In the future, it will come from both image and test inputs, in a major leap in technology that has not yet been released.

For instance, if a user sends a picture of an inside of a refrigerator, GPT-4 will correctly identify what is in there and concoct what could be prepared with the presented ingredients.