OpenAI’s artificial intelligence program ChatGPT no longer allows users to make their conversations with the AI discoverable by search engines.

Previously, ChatGPT let users choose whether to make their back-and-forth queries public, and these public queries were then indexed by search engines, according to TechCrunch. This meant that other people could find ChatGPT conversations on search engines such as Google while looking for other information.

OpenAI Chief Information Security Officer Dane Stuckey said on X Thursday that the option to share a chat is now gone. A search by Fast Company before the feature was removed turned up nearly 4,500 public ChatGPT conversations in Google search results.

“This was a short-lived experiment to help people discover useful conversations,” Mr. Stuckey said. “This feature required users to opt-in. … Ultimately we think this feature introduced too many opportunities for folks to accidentally share things they didn’t intend to, so we’re removing the option. We’re also working to remove indexed content from the relevant search engines.”

The change to ChatGPT was implemented Friday and Mr. Stuckey said that OpenAI was working to get previously publicized chats removed from search engine results.

• Brad Matthews can be reached at bmatthews@washingtontimes.com.