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Thousands of Grok chats are now searchable on Google | TechCrunch (techcrunch.com)

submitted 5 months ago by Zerush@lemmy.ml to c/privacy@lemmy.ml

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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]. 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].

[^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

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[-] Barbarian@sh.itjust.works 2 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

You can't run an LLM on a crappy PC, that's true. You need at least a decent CPU. If you're running an LLM locally, there's no calls to the outside world. I have a very mid computer, it isn't great, and unfortunately I need to work with LLMs due to my job. A call to my local LLM might take ~2 minutes where using an online platform it might take ~30 seconds, but I think that's a reasonable trade.

If you have a gaming PC, you have a platform that can run a local LLM.

this post was submitted on 23 Aug 2025

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