US — OpenAI emailed users in the United States on April 30 about updates to its privacy policy that allow the company to use cookies to promote its products and services on third-party websites. The email stated that the change does not affect the contents of ChatGPT conversations.

"We'll now use cookies to promote OpenAI products and services on other websites," the April 30 email read. "This does not impact your conversations in ChatGPT. Your conversations with ChatGPT are private and are not shared with marketing partners."

Under the updated policy, OpenAI may use cookies to promote its products and services on third-party websites using information collected from user interactions with its services. The policy states that OpenAI may share limited information with partners to promote services like ChatGPT and Codex off its platforms, and that identifiers such as users' email addresses or cookie IDs may be sent to advertising platforms. Those identifiers may be used to check if users took specific actions, such as signing up for Codex after seeing an advertisement on Instagram.

"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," OpenAI spokesperson Taya Christianson said. "Nothing about our policy of not sharing people's conversations or other private user content with advertisers has changed," Christianson added.

The new privacy policy lists marketing partners alongside vendors and service providers in disclosures of personal data, and states that OpenAI shares limited information with select marketing partners who are not service providers to promote products and services on third-party properties and assess their effectiveness. Some of those partners may receive information through cookies and similar technologies. The policy states that OpenAI does not sell personal data and does not engage in targeted advertising activities for users known to be under 18 years of age.

OpenAI categorizes various types of user information as personal data, including birth dates, payment information, and user prompts. The policy states that OpenAI does not process sensitive personal data for the purpose of inferring characteristics about a consumer.

Users can opt out of marketing data tracking by going to Settings, Data Controls, Marketing Privacy in the ChatGPT app. Opt-out is also available through the Your Privacy Choices link on openai.com or through mechanisms such as Global Privacy Control.

In February, OpenAI began rolling out advertisements at the bottom of ChatGPT outputs for users in the U.S. Google is exploring ways to integrate advertisements into the user experience of generative artificial intelligence tools and features.