OpenAI now requires ChatGPT to access your bank accounts

Your faith in AI is about to be tested: OpenAI will let you give a chatbot access to your bank account. The new feature announced at today’s preview will allow users to “securely connect” with ChatGPT Plaid – a banking integration platform and software used by 12,000 financial institutions, including Schwab, Fidelity, Chase, Capital One, and others.

“Over 200 million people are already visiting ChatGPT every month with financial questions – from budgeting to advice on how to cut back on spending,” OpenAI said in its announcement. “Now, users can securely connect their financial accounts with Plaid to better view their finances based on their goals, lifestyle, and priorities shared with ChatGPT, powered by OpenAI’s advanced analytics.”

Once financial accounts are linked, OpenAI says ChatGPT users can view a dashboard detailing their financial history, including any active subscriptions. Users can also ask it to help them with financial decisions such as buying a house or applying for credit cards and show any changes in usage.

The bonus will first be available to US users who subscribe to ChatGPT’s $200-per-month Pro tier. “We will learn and improve from the initial implementation before deploying to Plus, with the goal of making it available to everyone,” says OpenAI.

This implementation follows the introduction of OpenAI ChatGPT Health in January, a service designed for health-related questions that “do not diagnose or treat.” Health, like money, requires a high dependency that OpenAI will keep data private and secure.

To ease worries, OpenAI promises users “control over their data,” including the ability to remove their bank accounts from ChatGPT at any time, although the company has 30 days to remove your data from its systems. You can also view and delete “financial memories” such as goals or financial status stored by the chatbot. User control extends to whether your data is fed back to AI models – users can enable the option “Improve the model for everyone” to allow financial data from their ChatGPT conversations to be used to train AI, for example. OpenAI also says ChatGPT cannot change your bank accounts or see “all account numbers.”

But that he can view your bank accounts, transactions, stock portfolio, and debts such as mortgages and credit cards. And OpenAI – the company itself eventually they must turn a profit – does not specify what the company will do with all financial information outside of AI training, or if there are additional safeguards to protect users’ financial data from hacking. What can happen?