Whenever a Grok user clicks the “share” button on a conversation with the chatbot, it creates a unique URL that the user can use to share the conversation via email, text, or on social media. According to Forbes, that also makes the URL indexable by search engines like Google, Bing, and DuckDuckGo, which in turn lets anyone look up those conversations on the web.

Grok, Elon Musk’s AI chatbot, has exposed hundreds of thousands of private user conversations through Google search indexing. When users click the “share” button to create a URL for sharing their chat, the conversation becomes publicly searchable - often without users realizing it[1][2].

Google has indexed over 370,000 Grok conversations, including sensitive content like medical questions, personal information, and at least one password[2:1]. Unlike OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which quickly removed a similar feature after backlash, Grok’s share function does not include any warning that conversations will become public[3].

According to Forbes, some marketers are already exploiting this feature by intentionally creating Grok conversations to manipulate search engine rankings for their businesses[2:2].

  1. TechCrunch - Thousands of Grok chats are now searchable on Google ↩︎

  2. Forbes - Elon Musk’s xAI Published Hundreds Of Thousands Of Grok Chatbot Conversations ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎

  3. Fortune - Thousands of private user conversations with Elon Musk’s Grok AI chatbot have exposed on Google Search ↩︎

  • phase@lemmy.8th.world
    41·
    1 day ago

    This is my point: if you can’t afford a server powerful enough then don’t use an AI.

    If you can’t afford a server but use an AI you have to accept some compromises. One of those is to be spied on. The true question isn’t to use AI but to accept to be heard, recorded, analysed, and perhaps used against you.

    A start-up is a company which hopes to be bought by a bigger one. To be bought at the higher price, they need to have something a big company would like to have. Like data. Especially since those companies are cutting corners to reach the market and survive.

    Some aren’t bought but it’s not the majority.

    • Zerush@lemmy.mlOP
      12·
      23 hours ago

      Naturally the first question is, how they make money. There are several options how they can do it. There are mainly two manners, the ethical and the unetical way. The unethical way is, to recive money from several companies to push determinated results, SEO positionings, to profile the user, selling private data to advertising companies…, or the ethical way which don’t compromete the user privacy, offering an paid pro version, contextual ads, revenue by some shops when the user buy something using the service…

      Andi’s business model

      https://andisearch.com/business/

      Excluding of business models apps and services fom non-lucrative organizacions and hobby projects, good example of the last is the SSuite, made by two electricians which gain their money with the owned electric workshop, nothing to do with programming.