ChatGPT users are unloading personal thoughts and feelings to the chatbot in detailed terms. So much so that Altman, OpenAI’s chief executive, has been warning that they shouldn’t expect the same sorts of privacy protections that come with intimate conversations with psychologists or lawyers. 

“People talk about the most personal s— in their lives to ChatGPT,” Altman said during a podcast appearance in July 2025. “If you go talk to ChatGPT about your most sensitive stuff and then there’s like a lawsuit or whatever, like we could be required to produce that and I think that’s very screwed up. I think we should have like the same concept of privacy for your conversations with AI that we do with a therapist or whatever.”

Excerpt from Tim Higgins, Why Apple’s Tim Cook Is the Odd Man Out in the AI Race, WSJ, Aug. 2025