Want to show chats with AI in Google Search? I don't!
Openai's ChatGpt raised several eyebrows this week when people realized that a Google search could find a specific chat. People were checking boxes to share chats publicly, but it seemed like not everyone understood what they were doing.
On Thursday, Openai said it would stop indexing chats that Google shares.
Meanwhile, Meta's standalone Metaai app also allows users to share chats. This allows Google to continue to create indexes. This means that it can be displayed in searches. I did lots of Google searches and found many Metaai conversations in the results.
Launched this spring, the meta AI app will allow people to share chats with the “discover” feed. Google Crawlers can “index” that feed when using Google Search before providing results. For example, if you do a site-specific search on Google for “Meta.ai” and the keyword “balloon”, you might come up with a chat someone had about where to get the best birthday balloons on Meta Ibot.
As Business Insider reported in June, the Meta AI discovery feed was packed with examples of chats that seemed inherently personal, including medical questions, specific career advice, and relationship issues. Some included identification information such as phone numbers, email addresses, and full names.
All of these people clicked and shared based on the personal nature of some chats, but people could speculate that they might have misunderstood the meaning of sharing a conversation.
After Business Insider wrote about this a few weeks ago, the Meta AI app has made some tweaks to warn users more clearly about how discovery feeds work. Now, when you choose to share a conversation, you will get a pop-up with the warning “The conversation in the feed is public so anyone can watch and engage.”
Meta AI app warns you before sharing posts to your discovery feed. Meta AI/Screenshots
Additional warnings seem to be working.
Scrolling through the discovery feed shows that there are far fewer conversations between accidental private texts with instances of people who are primarily using it for image creation (though it seemed to have at least some of them).
Related Stories
Business Insider tells the innovative stories you want to know
Business Insider tells the innovative stories you want to know
Meanwhile, Meta president Daniel Roberts confirmed that the discovery feed and shared Meta AI chat will continue to be indexed by Google. He repeated the multi-step process I just described.
For now, Meta AI can only be used via mobile apps, not via the web. This leads to the view that even discovery feed exists as walled gardens that exist only within the meta AI app, separate from the Internet. However, posts from Discover Feed (and only those public posts) can be shared as links around the web. That's where Google Index appears. It can also be confusing to users.
There could really be some people right now. do I would like to share my AI chat with the public. We would also appreciate your viewing of chats in Google searches along with your Instagram and Facebook handles.
But I still don't understand why someone wants to share their interactions or why someone else wants to read them.
