OpenAI adds new data controls to ChatGPT, to launch business version

Artificial intelligence (AI) research firm OpenAI said that it is rolling out new controls that will allow users of its generative AI tool ChatGPT to turn off their chat history. 

Dubbed as "incognito mode" the company wrote in a blog post published on Tuesday that any conversation that takes place while chat history is disabled will not be used to train OpenAI’s models or appear in the “history” sidebar. That said, the new offering lets users switch off "chat history and training" in their settings and export their data. 

OpenAI also said that it will keep the new conversations for 30 days, but it will only review them if it is necessary to monitor for abuse. 

The move comes as scrutiny has grown over how ChatGPT and other chatbots manage hundreds of millions of users' data, commonly used to improve, or "train", AI. 

Italy last month banned ChatGPT for possible privacy violations, saying OpenAI could resume the service if it met demands such as giving consumers tools to object to the processing of their data. France and Spain also began probing the service. 

However, Mira Murati, OpenAI's chief technology officer, was quoted in a report by Reuters published on Tuesday that the company was compliant with European privacy law and is working to assure regulators.  

The new features did not arise from Italy's ChatGPT ban, she said, but from a months-long effort to put users "in the driver's seat" regarding data collection. 

"We'll be moving more and more in this direction of prioritising user privacy," Murati said, with the goal that "it's completely eyes off and the models are super aligned: they do the things that you want to do". 

“We hope this provides an easier way to manage your data than our existing opt-out process,” OpenAI wrote in the post. The company added that users can change their chat history settings at any time. 

OpenAI also announced a new option that will make it easier for users to export their conversations and learn which information is stored in ChatGPT. Users who export their conversations will receive the data in a file via email, according to the company. 

The San Francisco-based AI firm also said that it plans a "ChatGPT Business" subscription with additional data controls. The new offering is aimed at “professionals who need more control over their data as well as enterprises seeking to manage their end users.” 

“ChatGPT Business will follow our (application programing interface) API’s data usage policies, which means that end users’ data won’t be used to train our models by default,” OpenAI wrote in a blog post published on Wednesday. “We plan to make ChatGPT Business available in the coming months.”

OpenAI previously said that it was exploring additional paid plans for ChatGPT with its growing popularity. The first subscription tier, ChatGPT Plus, launched in February and is priced at $20 per month. 

Launched in November 2022, ChatGPT is estimated to have reached 100 million monthly active users in January just two months after its launch. Last month, OpenAI announced a new capability to ChatGPT that will allow developers access to third-party websites and services in real-time through the app. For example, with the new capability, ChatGPT can access services such as grocery delivery stores or travel search portals, give users compiled results based on their search queries, and also link them to a page on the relevant services in order to make purchases.

Microsoft Corp, which has invested significantly in OpenAI, already offers ChatGPT to businesses. The company mentioned that the new service would appeal to the cloud provider's existing customers.