Conversations with Grok are anything but secret. Hundreds of thousands of conversations with the chatbot are searchable via Google, without users fully realizing it.
If you’re chatting with Grok, you’d better not click the share button. Before you know it, you’re sharing your conversation with the entire world. Forbes discovered that more than hundreds of thousands of conversations with Grok can be found via Google. Users appear to be unaware that their conversations can be made public.
The discovery was made by a British journalist who found his conversation with Grok via Google. This happens when you click the button to share your chat conversation. This creates a URL that links to your conversation, but xAI also publishes this link on its website, causing every shared link to be indexed by search engines.
Murder Plots and Chemical Weapons
Forbes searched for some conversations and discovered that users had unknowingly made their personal information public. Some conversations contained names, medical information, documents, and even a password. Users seem unaware that sharing the conversation makes that information publicly visible.
Other conversations take much darker turns. Grok’s instructions for making illegal drugs, chemical weapons for “mass destruction” or a detailed plan for a murder plot against Elon Musk are all now publicly available. xAI itself has not yet responded to the news.
Not just Grok
Grok is not the only AI chatbot that has leaked conversations. OpenAI quickly removed an “experimental” feature that shares your ChatGPT conversations with Google after criticism. Elon Musk openly mocked OpenAI for this in one of many online feuds, but the boomerang has quickly returned. The Meta AI app has also already proven to be a privacy disaster, which isn’t surprising given owner Meta’s questionable reputation regarding digital privacy.
xAI has possibly gone a step further and has trained Grok based on tweets from X users without asking for permission. So be careful when sharing personal information or important internal company documents, especially if you don’t have a paid account. Chatbots cannot be trusted with your biggest secrets.