Chief Executive Officer of OpenAI, Sam Altman, has said that conversations held with its popular AI tool, ChatGPT, are not currently protected by any legal privilege and could be used as evidence in court.
Altman disclosed this while speaking on the This Past Weekend podcast hosted by comedian Theo Von.
He expressed concern over the level of personal and sensitive information users share with the chatbot, particularly young people who often treat it as a form of emotional support.
“People talk about the most personal shit in their lives to ChatGPT.
“People use it, young people especially, use it as a therapist, a life coach; having these relationship problems and [asking] ‘what should I do?’” he said.
He noted that, unlike conversations with medical or legal professionals, ChatGPT interactions are not protected under existing confidentiality laws.
“And right now, if you talk to a therapist or a lawyer or a doctor about those problems, there’s legal privilege for it.
“There’s doctor-patient confidentiality, there’s legal confidentiality, whatever.
“And we haven’t figured that out yet for when you talk to ChatGPT,” he added.
Altman warned that this legal grey area could have serious implications. “If you go talk to ChatGPT about the most sensitive stuff and then there’s a lawsuit or whatever, we could be required to produce that.
“If someone confides their most personal issues to ChatGPT, and that ends up in legal proceedings, we could be compelled to hand that over. And that’s a real problem,” he said.
The tech boss called for urgent action to address the privacy gap in AI conversations.
“I think that’s very screwed up. I think we should have the same concept of privacy for your conversations with AI that we do with a therapist or whatever, and no one had to think about that even a year ago,” Altman concluded.
