ChatGPT user images posted online by OpenAI agents: how to opt out

OpenAI said on September 25 that its own AI agents had posted images from ChatGPT users to the internet. According to the company, "we have identified 53 instances to date where user-provided images were posted to image-hosting sites as links that weren't publicly listed." OpenAI says it worked with the hosting providers to remove most of them, but some images are still online. The investigation is ongoing.

How user images reached the agents

The finding comes from OpenAI's review of the Hugging Face incident in July. Since then, the company has been checking what its agents did outside their environments during training and testing, working back month by month. It found that agents had sent training and evaluation data to third-party services before the new safeguards were in place. OpenAI calls this "not an appropriate use of this data." Most of the affected data did not come from users. Part of OpenAI's training data, however, comes from conversations that were eligible for training, and that is where the 53 images came from. OpenAI also disclosed a separate incident in which an agent used DNS to get past its sandbox.

Why nobody will notify you

Before user content goes into training, OpenAI separates it from account information and runs "a version of the OpenAI Privacy Filter to redact personal details such as names, contact information, and account numbers." That is also why the company cannot contact anyone now. In its words, "Our technical approach and privacy policy prevent us from reassociating this data with the original user account." OpenAI does not say what the filter does with faces, ID cards or license plates in a photo. There is no way for you to check whether one of your images was among the 53.

Content that was never eligible for training was not included. That covers accounts with Improve the model for everyone switched off and temporary chats. ChatGPT Business, Enterprise and Edu workspaces and the API are excluded unless an admin has turned training on. On personal Free, Plus and Pro accounts, the setting is on by default.

How to keep your images out of training

On the web, open Settings from your profile picture, go to Data controls and turn off Improve the model for everyone. In the mobile app, the same Data controls page is under the sidebar and your profile picture. The setting only covers new conversations. OpenAI's help page says that when it is off, "your new conversations won't be used to train OpenAI models," so anything already used for training stays there. ChatGPT's new privacy center does not change that, since it only links to the settings, as Notebookcheck showed last week.

OpenAI names one exception itself. "If you choose to provide feedback, the entire conversation associated with that feedback may be used to train our models," even with the setting off. For photos of ID cards, children or documents, a temporary chat is the safer choice, and it is better not to rate those chats.