OpenAI wants ChatGPT on macOS to watch your clicks and keystrokes so it can learn your habits and while we used to consider this a bad thing, the Tech bros are trying to flog it to us as a feature.
Rather than calling it a security nightmare, the feature is called Computer History, and it lets ChatGPT “learn from everything you do on your computer.”
OpenAI product and engineering manager Ari Weinstein said on X the tool builds a timeline of your actions so an AI agent can learn how you work. It can finish tasks you started and suggest skills and automations, which sounds handy until you remember what is being watched.
In a demo, OpenAI developer experience engineer Dominik Kundel asks ChatGPT in voice mode which Google Doc he last viewed. The bot answers with the document name, then checks whether it was shared in a group chat with his coworkers.
Kundel says the bot knows which messages to inspect because of earlier context. A preview of the model’s “thinking” shows it rummaging through his Slack history, which is not exactly soothing.
OpenAI says Computer History is opt-in. Weinstein said it automatically ignores incognito mode and private browser tabs, while users can blacklist apps from tracking. Users can view the AI’s “memory” database and delete anything they do not want stored. Still, giving an AI model a log of clicks, keystrokes and private work patterns is a big privacy grenade.
The desktop user may consent to the snooping, but people in private DMs may not have agreed to be scanned by someone else’s AI assistant. More than a few users have already called the feature “creepy.”
Computer History has drawn comparisons with Microsoft’s Windows Recall, the unloved feature that took regular desktop screenshots and made them searchable. Early versions of Recall were roasted after reports that it could record Social Security numbers and store sensitive screenshots in an unencrypted folder.
OpenAI says its system does not take screenshots and instead relies on “events” and “interactions.” Its own disclaimer says that “Computer History files can contain sensitive information” and that they are not encrypted, meaning “other programs running as your macOS user may be able to access them.”
