ChatGPT just gained the ability to track everything you do on your Mac and build a timeline of your app activity, and even if you never turn it on, you should know it exists. This news gave me a double-take and a bit of a shiver, honestly. So much so that before I even finished writing this post, I had to check whether Computer History was enabled on my ChatGPT/Codex version. It wasn’t, interestingly.
While I understand the rationale for creating this feature, people should be fully aware of its implications, particularly regarding privacy. In the context of “recording” the things that matter to provide more “instant” context to a chat session, when enabled, the Computer History feature can capture a lot of information you might not want it to (or even know it is capturing).
OpenAI says that it is off by default for paying users. Just know that it is probably a toggle away. Unclear to me is how and where the data will be used (e.g., locally, for training, etc.). There is a detailed page on OpenAI that goes through Computer History, and whether you are privacy-concerned or not, you should probably take a look at it.