OpenAI has revealed a new feature for ChatGPT’s desktop app on macOS that basically tracks your clicks, keystrokes, and more — all so it can fine-tune its AI model, raising obvious privacy concerns.
The feature, called Computer History, lets ChatGPT “learn from everything you do on your computer,” said Ari Weinstein, an OpenAI product and engineering manager, on X. The company describes the tool as creating a timeline of your actions that an AI agent can use to learn how you work, finish tasks on your behalf that you started, and suggest skills and automations.
The degree of access the software has to your digital life is dizzying. In a brief demo video, OpenAI’s Dominik Kundel, a developer experience enginer, asks ChatGPT in voice mode what the last Google Doc he viewed was, and the AI replies with the document’s name. When asked, the AI even double checks if the document was shared in a group chat with his coworkers.
Kundel explains that based on the context from earlier, the AI knows what messages to check, and a preview of the model’s “thinking” shows that it’s plowing through his Slack history.
OpenAI stresses that Computer History is opt-in rather than opt-out. The feature will also automatically ignore any content in incognito mode or private browser tabs, Weinstein said, and you can manually blacklist apps from being tracked. On top of that, you can view a database of the AI’s “memory” that it’s built and remove anything you don’t want to be in there.
Still, it’s a lot of access to be giving an AI model. And while the desktop user may consent to having their stuff viewed, that may not be the case for the people they’ve messaged in private DMs which the AI will be scanning on Slack and other platforms.
More than a few social media users called the feature “creepy.” In particular, Computer History garnered comparisons to Microsoft’s much-maligned Windows Recall, a feature that constantly takes screenshots of your desktop and uses an AI to automatically scan text and compile everything into a searchable database.
Earlier versions of Recall drowned in controversy when users discovered that it would record your Social Security number and store the sensitive screenshots in an unencrypted folder.
OpenAI’s Computer History doesn’t take screenshots and relies on “events” and “interactions” instead — your clicks, keystrokes, and other inputs. But it’s not hard to imagine the AI accidentally viewing stuff it’s not supposed to.
In a disclaimer, the company warns that “Computer History files can contain sensitive information” — and, crucially, aren’t encrypted, meaning “other programs running as your macOS user may be able to access them.”
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