ChatGPT was shut down due to a bug that exposed user chat titles

Monday’s ChatGPT outage was a little more problematic than originally anticipated.

According to Bloomberg(opens in new tab), the AI ​​chatbot was shut down due to a bug that exposed the title of a user’s chat history to other users. The title was displayed in the left sidebar, which normally shows the user’s chat history, but did not show the details of the user’s conversations with ChatGPT.

A Reddit user posted a screenshot(opens in new tab) How the bug was displayed in the browser. The sidebar shows the title of someone else’s ChatGPT session instead of my own chat history, and another user posted a similar screenshot.(opens in new tab) resemble report(opens in new tab) Shared by twitter(opens in new tab).

An OpenAI spokesperson confirmed the news to Bloomberg, saying ChatGPT was temporarily disabled following reports of the bug. The issue was caused by a bug in the open source software OpenAI was using, but the exact cause has not yet been determined.

ChatGPT went back online on Monday, but chat history is still unavailable. “We have fully restored the ChatGPT service to all users. We continue to work to restore past conversation history to users,” he said in a notice on OpenAI’s status dashboard.(opens in new tab) Said.

This issue was an unpleasant reminder that users should be careful what they type into ChatGPT (or similar services). We asked OpenAI about the incident and the steps the company plans to take to prevent such issues in the future. I will update this post as soon as I receive a reply.