TE
TechEcho
Home24h TopNewestBestAskShowJobs
GitHubTwitter
Home

TechEcho

A tech news platform built with Next.js, providing global tech news and discussions.

GitHubTwitter

Home

HomeNewestBestAskShowJobs

Resources

HackerNews APIOriginal HackerNewsNext.js

© 2025 TechEcho. All rights reserved.

Tell HN: Looks like ChatGPT starts profiling you

2 pointsby endymi0n11 months ago
So just yesterday I asked ChatGPT 4o something in a new chat and after answering the question, it referred to a plan of mine from a multiple weeks old chat that was 100% not in current context.<p>This hit me as being incredibly scary since so far I&#x27;ve been treating chats like disposable browser tabs and my intuition was that GPT was limited by context anyway. It looks to me like there&#x27;s a silent change behind the scenes that starts aggregating a profile of mine to inject into context.<p>From interviews, I know they&#x27;re after building a helpful assistant that &quot;knows everything about you&quot;, but this struck me as very surprising anyhow, and I&#x27;m still trying to understand why.<p>I think it&#x27;s the combination of<p>- silently adding this feature without info or opt-in<p>- retroactively applying it to chats<p>- assuming all previous chats and questions are from the same person<p>- apparently assuming no sensitive stuff has been discussed so far<p>Not sure if others think this is okay and especially since I&#x27;ve opted out of training on my data, I&#x27;m even wondering whether this is legal under GDPR Art. 19 (I&#x27;m a EU &quot;data subject&quot;).<p>Thoughts and experiences appreciated.

2 comments

sim7c0011 months ago
i kind of like i can make a new chat and it remembers an old one. Because it spits out so many repeated stuff, especially with code - each time re-iterating a whole source part etc., or having tons of docs explanations repeated each time. the chat becomes really slow! a new chat is fast again. if it retains context, that&#x27;s great :D
fragmede11 months ago
The memory feature was announced at <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;openai.com&#x2F;index&#x2F;memory-and-new-controls-for-chatgpt&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;openai.com&#x2F;index&#x2F;memory-and-new-controls-for-chatgpt...</a> and includes controls for it. It was also described in a popup when entering the chat interface.