Oops, Bard leaks shared user conversations into Google Search, is working to remove indexing

Well this is awkward – Google’s new Bard AI chatbot just started displaying user conversations as Search results. Per Gagan Ghotra in a post on X, typing “site:https://bard.google.com/share” into the Google Search bar will display discussions you or others have had with Bard.

Now, obviously, these are only discussions that have been ‘shared’, meaning someone has intentionally created a direct link to that chat to give to someone else or to test the sharing feature after it launched recently. With this in mind, you’d think that these would not be so private in nature, but that’s not exactly the case.

As you can see below, appending any keyword to the end of the query will net you conversations specific to that terminology. Some, as shown below when I type in ‘friendship’ seem to be a bit more personal. Digitaldigging.org discovered that many people shared very personal things with Bard in confidence, only to have them dumped out on to the open web. Luckily, usernames are not tied to this data, but still. Also, do keep in mind that while these conversations were intentionally shared, they weren’t meant to be shared with the entire freaking world, but likely just one friend who received that link.

That’s why this is so concerning. Some Bard chats are even being ranked as snippets in Google Search, which is not good. While I do believe we’re headed for a future like this where your chats with AI are used to drive search and deliver information to others, the fact that this even occurred is a bit whoops moment for Google.

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

Google SearchLiaison on X

Google SearchLiaison on X immediately responded to Gagan stating just that, as shown above. Essentially, they were meant to be unindexed, and someone somehow slipped up. We’re nearly 24 hours into this fiasco, and these chats are still indexed, but do keep in mind that it takes a while for search to crawl things, and similarly, it takes a while for it to forget them.