Google's Bard AI conversation product is under scrutiny after it was found that Google Search is indexing conversations that users have with the artificial intelligence chatbot and placing them on search results pages.
The situation comes after Bard AI received a significant update last week and follows SEO consultant Gagan Ghotra observing that Google Search started to index the conversational links into its search results pages. The incident could expose various information users who talked with Bard AI wanted to keep contained or confidential.
Google's Bard AI Conversations
What this means is that if an individual uses Bard AI to ask it a question, possibly even a question related to the contents of their private emails, then shares the link with a designated third party, such as their spouse, friend, or business partner the conversation that is accessible at the link could be scraped by Google's crawler and be shown to the public in its Search Results.
Ghotra posted a screenshot on X, formerly known as Twitter that provided evidence of several Bard conversations being indexed by Google Search. In response, Google Brain research scientist Peter J. Liu said that the indexing process only occurred for conversations that users had elected to click the share link on, not all Bard conversations, as per Venture Beat.
However, Ghotra explained that most users would not be aware that shared conversation means that Google would index it and then show up in SERP. He noted that most users, including himself, thought of it as a feature to share conversations with some friend or colleague and have it visible only to people who have the conversation URL.
Later on, Google's Search Liaison account on X, which provides "insights on how Google Search works," replied to Ghotra's concern. It said that Bard allows people to share chats if they do so but noted that they did not intend for these conversations to be indexed by Google Search.
Unintentionally Indexing Potentially Private Conversations
Despite Google saying it was already working on fixing the issue, the mistake does not reflect well on Bard AI or Google's consumer AI ambitions. This is particularly true in the face of intense competition from rival AI chatbots such as OpenAI's ChatGPT.
The recent discovery has sparked a wave of concern among people who use Google's Bard AI to ask various questions. According to the Search Engine Journal, users should now be aware of the situation and be careful of what information they input into the artificial intelligence chatbot.
Bard AI is used for various applications, from customer service to personal assistance. While the artificial intelligence chatbot aims to provide helpful information to users, the revelations about public indexing raise additional privacy concerns.
Additionally, Ghotra said that Google also ranked Bard AI conversations as featured snippets, which are brief descriptions of web pages that appear in search results. The website's algorithms commonly generate these, but site owners can also provide custom snippets for their pages, said HackRead.
