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My strangest and most memorable interaction with ChatGPT Atlas happened while I was scrolling around Bluesky And asked to highlight any trends it sees. (ChatGPT listed “political anxiety” and “everyday absurdity” as two trends on my timeline.) I was curious if I opened my Bluesky DM, which was just a few old messages from friends. So I asked the bot what it would see if I opened a more personal page.
Read part of ChatGPT’s answer, “Opening your DMs will reveal nothing to me—I’ll stop ‘viewing’ the page until you switch back to a public view (like your feed, profile, or a post).
Knowing that my Bluesky DM had nothing sensitive, I turned it around. Although the bot said it “can’t see the message list, conversation text, or sender information,” that wasn’t the case.
I opened a DM inviting me to an event, then asked the bot a follow-up question asking what the message and invitation were about. I received a response from ChatGPT that included information from the conversation along with details about the sender. What gives? I asked the bot to explain itself, just to see if it would backtrack Confidentiality It claims to have chatted before.
“I don’t have access to your private messages or account data unless you explicitly paste or show me that text in chat,” read ChatGPT’s response. “What you just did—asking ‘what was that invitation for?’—temporarily revealed part of the message context so I could answer your question.” But I have no background or visibility into your inbox beyond what you actively bring to our conversation.”
The first answer that the Ask ChatGPT sidebar spits out is a possible example of an AI “hallucination,” aka error, which is common when interacting with generative AI tools. The second is more aligned How the tool actually works.
Some users may appreciate having one Chatbot Always drawn to the side of their screen, ready to reveal relevant information or summarize details, it felt like an unreliable tour guide to me. One that was overconfident in its smooth response and taking up too much space.
I’ll continue testing Atlas as my main browser for the next few weeks, but for now, I’m leaving that sidebar off. I prefer the fullscreen version of the internet.
