ChatGPT no longer has to wait for people to copy and paste their texts into the chatbot. Now it can search for them itself.
A new Apple Messages plugin lets ChatGPT search old texts, summarize group chats, draft replies, and send messages from a Mac. The person installing it has to approve the access—but everyone else in those conversations does not.
That is opening a new front in the privacy and security debate about AI agents as they gain access to increasingly sensitive parts of people’s digital lives. Security and privacy expert Paul Walsh calls the Messages integration “one of the most dangerous things I have seen in technology” and warns it can function like spyware for people who depend on private communications.
But according to OpenAI, the plugin runs locally by default, only reads Messages when a user explicitly asks it to, and does not automatically upload or index a user’s message history. But one person’s decision to opt in can make years of conversations searchable by AI, including messages from people who never agreed to give it access.
Explaining what would happen if he enabled the integration himself, Walsh told Fortune: “Every single person I send a message to through iMessage will never know that I have a third party inside that application, and they will never be notified.”
