ChatGPT went offline and temporarily became inaccessible on Monday after some users discovered that they could see the titles of other people’s chat histories. People posted screenshots of their ChatGPT UI on social networks like Reddit and Twitter, showing sidebars populated with chats they said weren’t theirs. While they could only see the titles and not the entirety of other people’s conversations, the incident still highlights the need to be mindful when it comes with sharing details with or writing up questions for the chatbot.
An OpenAI spokesperson told Bloomberg that the company temporarily disabled ChatGPT after it became aware of these reports. Apparently, a bug in an open source software that the company has yet to name had caused the issue, but OpenAI is still investigating to figure out what triggered it exactly.
Based on the company’s incident report, it shut down ChatGPT on Monday morning and then fully restored the service 10 hours later after rolling out a fix. As of this writing, though, chat histories are still unavailable. OpenAI posted a note saying as much on the sidebar, along with an assurance that it’s “working to restore this feature as soon as possible.” The company has not announced an ETA for the feature’s restoration.
