Watch Out: Your Friends Might Be Sharing Your Number With ChatGPT

ChatGPT is getting more social, with a new feature that allows you to sync your contacts to see if any of your friends are using the chatbot or any other OpenAI product.

Details are light; the company has not shared images of what this experience will look like or what it will unlock for users. However, it has changed its privacy policy to say that contact syncing will help users "find friends." It's "completely optional," it says. However, even if you don't opt in, anyone with your number who syncs their contacts are giving OpenAI your digits.

"OpenAI may process your phone number if someone you know has your phone number saved in their device’s address book and chooses to upload their contacts," the company says.

If you are the person who syncs your contacts, and OpenAI finds an account with matching numbers, it will suggest you connect to that person. If you choose to follow them, that person may receive a notification with an option to follow back.

But why would you follow someone on ChatGPT? It lines up with reports, dating back to April, that OpenAI is building a social network. We haven't seen much since then, save for the Sora generative video app, which exists outside of ChatGPT and is more of a novelty. Contact sharing might be the first step toward a much bigger evolution for the world's most popular chatbot.

ChatGPT also supports group chats that let up to 20 people discuss and research something using the chatbot. Contact syncing could make it easier to invite people to these chats.

OpenAI will routinely check if someone in your contacts has made a new account, so it can try to connect you. The company claims it will not store the full data that might appear in your contact list, such as names or email addresses—just phone numbers. However, the company does store the phone numbers in its servers in a coded (or hashed) format. You can also revoke access in your device's settings. 

Also this week, OpenAI began rolling out advertisements inside ChatGPT. Free users can opt out of ads, though that restricts their messaging rate limits. This comes after rival AI firm Anthropic aired a Super Bowl spot criticizing OpenAI for its ad plan. CEO Sam Altman fired back, calling Anthropic dishonest.