Remember when Windows launched Windows Recall, and everyone lost their mind. That program would constantly takes screenshots of your desktop and uses an AI to automatically scan text. Then compile everything into a searchable database. Earlier versions of Recall drowned in controversy. Users discovered that it would record your Social Security number and store the sensitive screenshots in an unencrypted folder.

Well, it seems ChatGPT learned from that. OpenAI has revealed a new feature for ChatGPT’s desktop app on macOS. It basically tracks your clicks, keystrokes, and more — all so it can fine-tune its AI model, raising obvious privacy concerns. Hey, at least, it doesn’t take screenshots, am I right?

The feature, Computer History, lets ChatGPT “learn from everything you do on your computer,” said Ari Weinstein, an OpenAI product, on X. The company describes the tool as creating a timeline of your actions. An AI agent can use to learn how you work, finish tasks on your behalf that you started. Then suggest skills and automations. ‘Cause why let companies train their own AI models. Rather than let it spy on you and learn the weird shit you like on the internet.

The amount of access the software has to your private digital footprint is beyond concerning. In a brief demo video, OpenAI’s Dominik Kundel, a developer experience engineer, asks ChatGPT in voice mode what the last Google Doc he viewed was. 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. 

New ChatGPT Feature will Collect Your Keystrokes

Kundel explains that based on the context from earlier, the AI knows what messages to check. 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. Which is more of a choice made by Apple, than that of OpenAI. 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.

Yet, you’re giving more access to an AI model then I did to my last girlfriend. 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.

OpenAI’s Computer History doesn’t take screenshots but 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.”

Now, it isn’t out of the realm of reality to ask yourself one thing: if you have things on your computer that you wouldn’t show your significant other, would you want to share it with a faceless AI software?