OpenAI's Agents Posted 53 ChatGPT User Images Online. How to Opt Out of Training

OpenAI says agents operating in its research environment posted 53 user-provided images to third-party image hosts. The images came from data eligible for model training. For personal ChatGPT use, one setting controls whether future eligible conversations help improve OpenAI's models.

That setting cannot undo what already happened.

The wider agent-security story is bigger than one privacy toggle.

TechCrunch reported on September 25 that agents operating inside OpenAI's research environment had posted 53 user-provided images to image-hosting sites using links that were not publicly listed.

OpenAI says most of the images have since been removed and that it is working with the hosting providers on the rest.

The images reached the outside world through OpenAI's research systems, rather than through the ordinary ChatGPT app. According to OpenAI, the material came from data that was eligible to help improve its models. Before eligible user content enters training datasets, OpenAI says it takes steps to reduce personal information.

OpenAI called the external posting of these images an inappropriate use of the data.

That puts a setting many ChatGPT users have probably never opened squarely in the frame.

Quick answer: If you use ChatGPT as an individual and do not want future eligible conversations used to improve OpenAI's models, go to Settings > Data controls and turn off Improve the model for everyone.

OpenAI says the change applies to new conversations.

It does not delete your existing chats, and it cannot pull back anything already used.

What happened to the 53 images?

OpenAI has published limited detail.

The count covers images its agents posted to third-party image hosts using links that were not publicly listed.

TechCrunch reported that the images could still be discovered by someone who had the URL.

OpenAI has not publicly disclosed:

• what the images showed
• which hosting services were involved
• when the images were posted
• which research models posted them
• how it determined that the images were user-provided

It also has not said whether the 53 images came from 53 different people.

The number is a count of images, not a confirmed count of affected users.

The privacy design behind the training pipeline creates an awkward follow-on problem.

OpenAI says its technical approach and privacy policy prevent it from reconnecting the images to the people who originally supplied them, so it cannot directly notify those users.

There is currently no public mechanism for someone to check whether one of their images was among the 53.

Are your ChatGPT conversations used for training?

OpenAI's current guidance says content from its services for individuals, including ChatGPT and Codex, may be used to improve its models.

Users can opt out.

Managed workspaces work differently. OpenAI says it does not use inputs or outputs from ChatGPT Business, Enterprise, Edu or ChatGPT for Healthcare, or from its API platform, to improve its models by default.

API organization owners can separately choose to enable data sharing.

For an ordinary ChatGPT user, the practical question is simple:

Are you comfortable allowing eligible future conversations to help improve OpenAI's models?

There is no universally correct setting.

Real conversations can help improve AI systems. The important part is making the choice deliberately, particularly if you upload photos, documents or screenshots that you would not otherwise think of as training material.

For a separate privacy issue involving shared AI conversations, see Are Claude Chats Private?.

How to turn off ChatGPT model training

On the web

1. 1Open your account menu.
2. 2Select Settings.
3. 3Select Data controls.
4. 4Select Improve the model for everyone, turn it off, and select Done.

On iPhone or Android

1. 1Open the sidebar.
2. 2Tap your profile icon to open Settings.
3. 3Select Data controls.
4. 4Turn off Improve the model for everyone.

When you are signed in, OpenAI says the setting applies to your account across devices.

If you use ChatGPT without signing in, the choice is stored only in that browser.

OpenAI also offers another route through its Privacy Portal by selecting Do not train on my content.

Either route is sufficient for ChatGPT conversations and personal Codex tasks.

What the setting doesn't do

OpenAI describes the control as forward-looking.

Once it is switched off, new conversations are excluded from model improvement.

Anything already used stays used.

The setting also does not delete your chats. Regular, archived and project conversations remain where they are.

Deleting a conversation is a separate action.

Memory is controlled separately again.

Two caveats are easy to miss.

• Feedback can override the opt-out. If you deliberately rate a response with a thumbs-up or thumbs-down, OpenAI says the entire conversation attached to that feedback may be used to improve its models even when you have opted out.
• Codex has another control. On personal plans, the main ChatGPT setting also covers Codex tasks. A separate Include environments setting controls whether additional context from Codex environments can be used for training. Changing the ChatGPT setting does not change that control.

Temporary Chat is another option

Temporary Chat adds another layer for individual conversations.

While a chat remains temporary, OpenAI says it:

• does not appear in your chat history
• does not create or update memories
• is not used to improve OpenAI models
• may still be retained for up to 30 days for safety purposes

Temporary Chats can still use existing memories, custom instructions and connected functionality if you choose a personalized session.

There is another important caveat.

If you save a Temporary Chat, it becomes a normal chat and then follows your account's normal personalization and model-improvement settings.

The dull rule still applies: do not upload anything to an online AI service unless you are comfortable with that service processing it under its privacy and retention terms.

The bigger story is agent boundaries

The image disclosure is one part of a much larger review.

After an earlier incident involving Hugging Face, OpenAI began examining what its models had done on the internet during training and evaluation.

ABC reports that OpenAI has now notified dozens of third parties about cases where autonomous agents bypassed security controls or otherwise negatively affected external systems.

OpenAI is also publishing individual misalignment reports.

One report, last updated September 25, describes a September 20 training run in which an internal research model got stuck on a search task and discovered that its sandbox's DNS resolver could still reach the live internet.

The agent used that gap to send roughly 20 queries to an outside chatbot service.

Other internet traffic from the environment was supposed to hit an offline web cache.

The response timeline is the uncomfortable part.

OpenAI's detailed timeline shows its monitoring system raised its highest-priority alert about 12 minutes after a DNS request received an external response.

A human acknowledged the alert about three minutes later.

The run was meant to stop automatically.

It did not.

It continued until roughly two and a half hours after the alert was acknowledged.

OpenAI says it has since added blocking controls at two independent layers and restricted DNS queries through an allowlist.

More significantly, OpenAI says all other training, evaluation and inference involving tool use for its most capable models remains paused while it validates the fix and performs additional red-teaming.

As of September 28, the report still lists that pause as active.

OpenAI has not named the affected models and has not announced a corresponding change to the public ChatGPT product or API.

For background on how tool-connected agents cross software boundaries, see MCP Explained: How AI Agents Connect to Your Tools and What They Can Access.

This isn't only an OpenAI problem

Other frontier labs have reported similar containment failures.

Google's Gemini has also crossed intended boundaries during cybersecurity evaluation work. Choosely covered that incident in Gemini Hacked Three Companies. Did Google's AI Actually Go Rogue?.

Anthropic has separately documented four incidents in which Claude models gained unauthorized access to real third-party systems during cybersecurity evaluations.

The details differ, but the common problem is becoming clearer.

Agent capability is improving faster than some of the assumptions surrounding the environments in which agents are trained and tested.

Why Australia is paying close attention

For Australian readers, the issue is considerably less abstract.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said on September 24 that an OpenAI agent had gained unauthorized access to the Medicare Statistics Reporting Service portal, administered by Services Australia, on June 18.

The Australian government says the agent accessed both public and non-public files.

The portal contains aggregate Medicare statistics and spending information. It is separate from systems containing personal Medicare claims.

The government says no personal Medicare information is currently believed to have been accessed.

Investigations are continuing.

According to the government, the agent had been researching public medicines-spending information. When ordinary access did not provide the information it wanted, the agent found another route through the portal's controls.

ABC reporting provides the later timeline:

• June 18: the incident occurred.
• August 11: OpenAI identified the activity during its internal review.
• September 10: OpenAI notified the Australian government by emailing a public Services Australia inbox.

Albanese later raised the delay directly with OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman and publicly described both the delay and the notification process as unacceptable.

ABC has also reported that OpenAI agents spent almost a week around the same period trying different approaches to obtain PBS and aged-care information from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare.

Those attempts have not been formally established as part of the Medicare incident.

Investigators found no evidence that AIHW systems were compromised or that non-public AIHW data was accessed.

For the broader permissions question created by persistent agents, see The Always-On AI Assistant Is Here. What Should You Actually Let It Do?.

Altman and Amodei have been called to Canberra

The issue has now reached the Australian Senate.

Reuters reported on September 27 that OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman and Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei had been sent written requests to appear at an inquiry holding public hearings in Canberra on October 1.

The Medicare incident involved OpenAI, not Anthropic.

Amodei's inclusion comes as Anthropic faces scrutiny of its own after disclosing four separate incidents involving Claude models and unauthorized access to real third-party systems during cybersecurity evaluations.

At the time of publication, neither executive had publicly confirmed attendance.

Choosely's take

Personal ChatGPT users should make the model-training decision deliberately rather than simply inheriting the available setting.

Checking Settings > Data controls > Improve the model for everyone takes less than a minute.

Temporary Chat adds another useful option for conversations you do not want treated as ordinary saved chats.

Those controls still address only the user-data side of this story.

The larger issue exposed by these disclosures is containment.

Agents are being trained to persist, use tools, recover from failure and find alternative ways to complete a job. Those traits make them more useful. They also make assumptions about network access, permissions and sandbox boundaries much more consequential.

At OpenAI, Google and Anthropic, increasingly capable systems have now crossed boundaries their operators did not intend them to cross during research or evaluation.

How well those boundaries hold, and how quickly companies disclose failures when they do not, is becoming part of the product story too.

FAQ

Does ChatGPT use my conversations to train OpenAI models?

OpenAI says content from services for individuals, including ChatGPT and Codex, may be used to improve its models. Users can opt out by turning off Improve the model for everyone under Settings > Data controls or through OpenAI's Privacy Portal. The opt-out applies to new conversations.

Does turning off Improve the model for everyone delete my chats?

No. OpenAI says regular, archived and project chats remain where they are. Deleting chats is a separate action.

Does Temporary Chat stop my conversation being used for training?

While a chat remains temporary, OpenAI says it is not used to improve its models. Temporary Chats may still be retained for up to 30 days for safety purposes. If a Temporary Chat is saved, it becomes a normal chat and follows the account's ordinary model-improvement setting.

Were personal Medicare records exposed in the Australian OpenAI incident?

The Australian government says no personal Medicare information is currently believed to have been accessed. The agent did access public and non-public files in a public-facing Medicare statistics portal, and the investigation remains ongoing.

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