BEARING your soul to AI is “a ticking time bomb for everyone’s privacy” as OpenAI switches on marketing cookies, experts have claimed.
From last month, free tier users of ChatGPT by default have marketing cookies switched on – though paying subscribers are exempt.
OpenAI has denied that it shares any of your conversations with marketing partners and has pointed out that users can opt out at any time in the settings.
The change applies in nearly every global region, with exceptions in the EU, the UK, and South Korea, where strong privacy regulations like the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) remaining in place.
AI chatbots are designed to feel like confidants and people confess to them what they can’t tell a person: debts, diagnoses, marriages falling apart, experts say.
Large Language Models (LLM) include an encouraging voice, meaning more people divulge, they add.
We are entering very dangerous territory
Mitali Deypurkaystha, Human-First AI Strategist & Author at Newcastle upon Tyne-based Impact Icon AI, said we are entering “dangerous territory”.
She added: “Nearly half of young Europeans now say AI chatbots are easier to talk to than psychologists or healthcare professionals, which should terrify anyone who thinks these systems are just glorified search engines. People already understand that social media tracks what they post publicly.
“But chatbots are different because users treat them like confidants, revealing fears, debts, marriages falling apart and deeply personal thoughts they may not even tell close family members, never mind social media. The real danger is that many people have no idea where that emotional data could ultimately end up, or whether intimate conversations are quietly feeding advertising profiles behind the scenes.
“AI absolutely can be transformative, but if these systems are designed to feel emotionally safe while monetising vulnerability in the background, we are entering very dangerous territory.”
Katrina Young, Ethical AI & Digital Transformation Strategist at KYC Digital, said it raises serious questions under privacy laws.
She added: “The debate over where ‘context for quality’ ends and ‘data for advertisers’ begins assumes those boundaries are technically separate. In practice, they often are not. Conversation history, behavioural telemetry and personalisation signals frequently sit within interconnected systems designed to improve performance, optimise engagement and support commercial analytics simultaneously.
“That is why modern consent debates are becoming harder to untangle. The issue is no longer limited to what data is explicitly collected. AI systems increasingly infer sensitive behavioural insights from fragmented signals that may individually appear low risk. That raises serious questions under GDPR around meaningful consent, proportionality and transparency, particularly when free-tier services and paid services operate under different privacy expectations.
“Regulators may not need entirely new principles, but they may need clearer separation between service improvement, model optimisation and advertising-related data use before consumer trust erodes faster than governance evolves.”
Convenience usually means an end to your privacy, it’s really that simple
Colette Mason, AI Ethics Consultant at London-based Clever Clogs AI, said there’s a pattern: free product, mass adoption, then the data gets monetised.
She added: “Bearing your soul to AI is a ticking time bomb for everyone’s privacy. GDPR is a mere comfort blanket. The real mechanism isn’t the cookie popup, it’s legitimate interest fudging. Companies bundle useful features like ‘sync your browsing across devices’ into consent flows where the small print says ‘we and our partners can access’ your activity.
“You tick yes because the feature is genuinely helpful. What you’ve also ticked yes to is a profiling pipeline you’ll never see and can’t meaningfully reverse. Sadly, end-user convenience usually means an end to your privacy. It’s really that simple.”
OpenAI spokesperson Taya Christianson denied that the company is sharing any conversations and pointed out that users can opt out at any time in settings.
She added: “Nothing about our policy of not sharing people’s conversations or other private user content with advertisers has changed.
“Like many companies, OpenAI works with select marketing partners to help people learn about our products on third-party websites and apps, and we updated our privacy policy to clarify how this works.
“We do not share your conversations with these marketing partners. To make OpenAI marketing efforts more relevant and measure their effectiveness, we may share limited identifiers, such as cookie IDs or device IDs, and users can opt out at any time in settings.”
Photo by Vyshnavi Bisani on Unsplash.
