---
title: "OpenAI has contract workers reviewing real ChatGPT conversations"
url: https://www.parallelquant.com/posts/openai-has-contract-workers-reviewing-real-chatgpt-conversations-e57728
source_name: "The Decoder"
source_url: https://the-decoder.com/openai-has-hundreds-of-contract-workers-reading-your-chatgpt-conversations/
published: 2026-09-14T17:15:28.000Z
topics: ["policy", "products"]
publisher: "Parallel Quant"
---

# OpenAI has contract workers reviewing real ChatGPT conversations

*2026-09-14 · Source: [The Decoder](https://the-decoder.com/openai-has-hundreds-of-contract-workers-reading-your-chatgpt-conversations/)*

OpenAI employs hundreds of contract workers who read real, anonymized ChatGPT conversations and rate them on a 1-to-7 scale, partly to reduce sycophantic or overly human-like responses, according to a report. The "Improve the model for everyone" setting that permits this review is enabled by default and must be manually turned off to opt out.

**Why it matters:** Default-on human review of conversations, even anonymized, is a meaningful privacy tradeoff most users are unlikely to know about or actively opt out of, especially since sensitive information can still surface despite anonymization. It's a concrete data point in the broader debate over how AI companies balance model-improvement pipelines against user privacy expectations.

**Topics:** policy, products

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Read the original: https://the-decoder.com/openai-has-hundreds-of-contract-workers-reading-your-chatgpt-conversations/
Canonical: https://www.parallelquant.com/posts/openai-has-contract-workers-reviewing-real-chatgpt-conversations-e57728
Published by Parallel Quant — https://www.parallelquant.com