For most people out there, ChatGPT isgoing to be their very first exposure to AI technology they caninteract with directly. That's exciting, and it feels like the future, so it canbe easy to forget about the traditional privacy concerns there usually are with online services.

Does ChatGPT Save Personal Information?

Yes, ChatGPT definitely does save your personal information, but not necessarily in the way you're used to worrying about sites saving your personal information.

When you talk to ChatGPT, whatever messages you send will be saved. As you might expect, this kind of data is likely useful in further tweaking, training, and updating ChatGPT; however, it's a cause for concern if you've ended up revealing personal information to ChatGPT, thinking it was merely an AI and not a person that might ever actually see what you've said.

Then, of course, on the backend of ChatGPT, your messages will be tied to your account, so you could end up in a situation where not only have you revealed personal information that's then stored on a server, but that information may also end up tied to your real name.

ChatGPT isn't exactly forthcoming on the specifics of what it's saving data for, but on the ChatGPT FAQ page, you'll see that ChatGPT is unable to delete specific prompts. And if you're interested in having your stored data deleted, you'll have to put in a request for deletion. So, it's safe to say that the chatbotis indeed saving information.

It's also important to remember that there could be other reasons why personal data is collected or saved outside of helping to make ChatGPT better. For example, in the context of advertising, having a storehouse of personal user information may well prove relevant to advertisers.

How to Protect Your Personal Data With ChatGPT

The best way to protect yourself is by being careful about what you tell ChatGPT. The best practice is not to share anything you wouldn't want any site, like Facebook, Google, or anything else, to have a record of you sharing.

While youcan 'delete' or 'clear' conversations on ChatGPT, it's unlikely this actually deletes any information off ChatGPT's servers, so don't make the mistake of thinking that deleting a particular message where you shared some personal information is actually gone.

If you have shared sensitive personal information with ChatGPT you want to be erased, the best step to take is to submit an account deletion request. This will erase your account and remove any data associated with your account.

However, know that submitting an account deletion request will take some time. You'll have to follow the steps outlined on ChatGPT's support page, and after that's done, it can take up to four weeks for your request to be processed and your account to be deleted, according to ChatGPT's site.

ChatGPT's support page also notes that once you submit a request for account deletion and that request is processed you won't be able to make an account again in the future. So, make sure you're done using ChatGPT if you're thinking about having your account deleted.

Lastly, youcan actually opt out of having your personal, private data used to help train, tweak, and update ChatGPT. Simply fill out the OpenAI Data Opt Out Request to opt-out. You can opt out of this both when it comes to ChatGPT as well as DALL-E.

However, this form relates to you being able to opt out of your data being used to improve ChatGPT performance, it doesn't necessarily mean that you'll be opting out of having any of your data being collected or recorded at all. It also doesn't necessarily mean that any data ChatGPT already has from you will be deleted.

• How much data is in ChatGPT?

  Over 500GB of information was entered into ChatGPT's learning model. Each time it's interacted with, it stores that data as well to better learn how to give more reliable answers.

• Is ChatGPT very different from Microsoft's chatbot?

  Each company would likely tell you they are different, but from a user's perspective, they work the same way. You ask the Bing AI chatbot questions and get answers that feel like you're chatting with a real person.