OpenAI’s ChatGPT Mac app was storing conversations in plain textual content

Till Friday, OpenAI’s lately launched ChatGPT macOS app had a doubtlessly worrying safety difficulty: it wasn’t laborious to search out your chats saved in your laptop and browse them in plain textual content. That meant that if a foul actor or malicious app had entry to your machine, they might simply learn your conversations with ChatGPT and the info contained inside them.

As demonstrated by Pedro José Pereira Vieito on Threads, the convenience of entry meant it was attainable to have one other app entry these recordsdata and present you the textual content of your conversations proper after they occurred. Pereira Vieito shared the app he made with me, and I used it to make a video exhibiting how the app can learn my ChatGPT conversations with the press of a button. I used to be additionally capable of finding the recordsdata on my laptop and see the textual content of conversations simply by altering the file identify.

After The Verge contacted OpenAI in regards to the difficulty, the corporate launched an replace that it says encrypts the chats. “We’re conscious of this difficulty and have shipped a brand new model of the applying which encrypts these conversations,” OpenAI spokesperson Taya Christianson says in a press release to The Verge. “We’re dedicated to offering a useful consumer expertise whereas sustaining our excessive safety requirements as our expertise evolves.”

After downloading the replace, Pereira Vieito’s app now not works for me, and I can’t see my conversations in plain textual content.

I requested Pereira Vieito how he found the unique difficulty. “I used to be interested in why [OpenAI] opted out of utilizing the app sandbox protections and ended up checking the place they saved the app knowledge,” he mentioned. OpenAI solely gives the ChatGPT macOS app via its personal web site, that means the app doesn’t must comply with Apple’s sandboxing necessities that apply to software program distributed through the Mac App Retailer.

Until you’ve opted out, OpenAI could overview ChatGPT conversations for security and to coach its fashions. However that privilege isn’t one you’d anticipate to increase to unknown third events that get entry and know the place to look.