Google Mistakenly Allowed Google Search To Index Users' Conversation With Bard

Mistakes happen, but some mistakes are worse than others.

Bard is Google's answers to OpenAI's ChatGPT. They are both pretty much alike, and are being heavily developed. But what the former has that the latter doesn't, is a close integration with Google Search, the largest search engine the web has ever seen.

Due to how Google products work in an ecosystem that is closely tied together into a system, there are chances that data is leak from one place to another.

And this time, that is what exactly happened.

According to Gagan Ghotra, an SEO consultant from Australia, Bard users' interaction with the chatbot is leaking to Google Search.

Ghotra observed that Google Search had begun indexing shared Bard conversational links into its search results pages, potentially exposing information users meant to be kept contained or confidential.

This is a big privacy concern.

Google Bard, the search giant’s conversational AI product, underwent a big update, which allows it to connect with Google Apps.

With Bard's ability to scan pretty much all of users' data inside their Google Account, this leak is a huge privacy issue.

For example, if a user asked Bard related to the content of their private emails, and then shared the link with a designated third-party, like their spouse or friend, or a business partner, that link could be in turn be scraped by Google's crawlers and show up publicly to the world to see on Google Search.

This is because user conversation with the chatbot should not be made public by default whatever the cost.

Google Brain research scientist Peter J. Liu replied to Ghotra on X, noting that the Google Search indexing only occurred for those conversations that users had chosen to click the share link on.

What this means, not all Bard conversations can be indexed. Only those conversations that have links pointing to them, could leak.

"Most users wouldn’t be aware of the fact that shared conversation mean it would be indexed by Google and then show up in SERP, most people even I was thinking of it as a feature to share conversation with some friend or colleague & it being just visible to people who have conversation URL," replied Ghotra.

Ultimately, Google’s Search Liaison account on X, which provides "insights on how Google Search works."

"Bard allows people to share chats, if they choose. We also don’t intend for these shared chats to be indexed by Google Search. We’re working on blocking them from being indexed now," the liaison said to Ghotra .

Google said that it's working to fix the issue.

But still the mistake does not reflect well on Bard's reputation, especially when it concerns Google's bigger AI ambitions.

Previously, Google said that it has the right to "collect" public information from the web to train Bard, suggesting that it can use any data it can find on the web, as if it's always for it to take.

Read: Google Said It Has The Right To 'Collect' Public Information From The Web To Train Its Bard AI