ChatGPT now tracks your activity on other sites through an ad collector
openai
| Source: Mastodon | Original article
OpenAI’s ad collector drops a __obi cookie on .openai.com that ties a user’s ChatGPT account to their activity on other websites, sending the data to advertisers.
OpenAI has quietly added a cross‑site tracking feature to ChatGPT that lets the service learn what users do on other websites. The change, rolled out in mid‑September 2026, installs a cookie called **__obi** on the *.openai.com* domain while a person is logged into ChatGPT. The cookie’s value is linked to the user’s ChatGPT account and is subsequently sent back to OpenAI whenever the same browser visits any site that loads an OpenAI‑hosted ad component. In practice, any advertiser that buys space on ChatGPT can embed a small piece of OpenAI code on its own pages, allowing OpenAI to receive the __obi identifier and infer the user’s browsing activity beyond the chatbot.
The move has ignited a fresh privacy debate in the AI sector. Advertisers have long used cookies to build profiles for targeted ads, but the practice has rarely been seen in a generative‑AI product. Observers note that the mechanism mirrors tracking systems employed by Google and Meta, yet it marks the first documented instance of such surveillance on an AI chat interface. Privacy advocates warn that tying the identifier to a ChatGPT account could enable richer profiling of individuals who may assume the service is a stand‑alone conversation tool, not a data‑gathering platform.
OpenAI has not yet issued a detailed comment, but the discovery arrives amid a string of legal pressures on the company, including a recent lawsuit in British Columbia over alleged safety lapses and ongoing negotiations with Anthropic on model stress‑testing. Regulators in Europe and North America are likely to scrutinise the feature for compliance with emerging AI‑specific privacy rules.
Watch for OpenAI’s official response, potential updates to its privacy policy, and any regulatory or consumer‑rights actions that could force the company to offer an opt‑out or redesign the ad collector. The episode also raises broader questions about how AI providers will balance monetisation with user privacy as advertising becomes a larger revenue stream for free‑tier services.
Sources
Back to AIPULSEN