Search engines reportedly indexed users' chats with Grok: What it means

Chats shared via Grok's "share" button are being indexed by Google and other search engines, making user conversations publicly searchable on the web

Conversations that users had with Elon Musk-owned xAI’s chatbot Grok are now reportedly popping up on Google Search results. According to a report by Forbes, users who clicked on the “share” button in their conversation with Grok have exposed their chats to the world. In simpler words, this means that search engines have made these chats accessible to everyone, and anyone can now look up those conversations on the web.

 

Notably, this comes just weeks after OpenAI suffered a similar situation where thousands of users’ chats with ChatGPT got indexed on Google, and their conversations with the AI bot were left out in the open to be consumed by the world.

 

How does this happen exactly?

When a Grok user selects the “share” button on a chat, the platform automatically generates a unique URL for that specific conversation. This link can then be copied and distributed through various channels such as email, direct messaging apps, or social media platforms, allowing others to view the exchange without needing access to the user’s account.

 

However, a report by Forbes highlights a privacy concern: these links are not restricted to private sharing. Instead, they are being indexed by major search engines, including Google, Bing, and DuckDuckGo. This means that once created, some of these shared Grok conversations can become publicly searchable on the open web, making it possible for anyone to discover them simply by entering the right keywords in a search engine.

What happened with OpenAI’s ChatGPT

OpenAI, the developer of ChatGPT, introduced a sharing option that lets users generate public links to their conversations. By clicking the “share” button and choosing “create link,” users could obtain a unique URL (such as chat.openai.com/share/...) that could be shared through email, messaging, or social platforms.

 

However, many users were unaware that these links were not entirely private. Unless certain settings were disabled, search engines like Google and Bing could index the shared conversations. This meant that people outside the intended audience could stumble upon these chats through keyword searches. Importantly, only the conversations that were manually shared were affected, but many assumed the links were restricted to recipients only.

Following the report, OpenAI admitted the issue was the result of a short-lived “experiment” to test whether making shared chats more discoverable would be useful. The move, however, triggered privacy concerns, prompting OpenAI to quickly remove the option for these links to be indexed. The company clarified that while users can still share conversation links, they will no longer appear in search results on platforms like Google.