Whenever a Grok user clicks the “share” button on a conversation with the chatbot, it creates a unique URL that the user can use to share the conversation via email, text, or on social media. According to Forbes, that also makes the URL indexable by search engines like Google, Bing, and DuckDuckGo, which in turn lets anyone look up those conversations on the web.

Grok, Elon Musk’s AI chatbot, has exposed hundreds of thousands of private user conversations through Google search indexing. When users click the “share” button to create a URL for sharing their chat, the conversation becomes publicly searchable - often without users realizing it[1][2].

Google has indexed over 370,000 Grok conversations, including sensitive content like medical questions, personal information, and at least one password[2:1]. Unlike OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which quickly removed a similar feature after backlash, Grok’s share function does not include any warning that conversations will become public[3].

According to Forbes, some marketers are already exploiting this feature by intentionally creating Grok conversations to manipulate search engine rankings for their businesses[2:2].

  1. TechCrunch - Thousands of Grok chats are now searchable on Google ↩︎

  2. Forbes - Elon Musk’s xAI Published Hundreds Of Thousands Of Grok Chatbot Conversations ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎

  3. Fortune - Thousands of private user conversations with Elon Musk’s Grok AI chatbot have exposed on Google Search ↩︎

  • helloworld@lemmy.ml
    3·
    1 day ago

    To be honest, this forum here is also indexed by google search as well, and I think it is good for lemmy, if google started advertising lemmy/ showing it in search results.