How does ChatGPT know my location?

[xbox1]

ChatGPT randomly told me the city I am from. And it did this in a very weird way. I have looked at all my conversations with ChatGPT and I have never told it even the country I am from, let alone the city. I use ChatGPT mostly to ask it about books and other things like this. I am a free user and this happened with the GPT-4o model. Today, I gave it the transcript from a video and asked it to summarize the main points. But, instead of doing this, it randomly recommended me vegan restaurants in my city. When I asked it why it did this, it answered by saying that this was what I asked for. Then, I told it what the actual task was and asked why it picked that city, and it answered by saying that the restaurant recommendation was a bug and that it picked the city arbitrarily.

[Halima]

did it “update memory” right after your question? I noticed a bug related to that. This happened to me like 3 times so far. I would reference its memory (like I would tell it to store an information about me in its profile of me) alongside a a question, and instead of answering my question it would give me recommendations related to my country. Once, it gave me restaurants, once hotels/resorts…etc. It’s a really weird bug tbh.

[mar1os]

@xbox1

ChatGPT randomly told me the city I am from. And it did this in a very weird way. I have looked at all my conversations with ChatGPT and I have never told it even the country I am from, let alone the city. I use ChatGPT mostly to ask it about books and other things like this. I am a free user and this happened with the GPT-4o model. Today, I gave it the transcript from a video and asked it to summarize the main points. But, instead of doing this, it randomly recommended me vegan restaurants in my city. When I asked it why it did this, it answered by saying that this was what I asked for. Then, I told it what the actual task was and asked why it picked that city, and it answered by saying that the restaurant recommendation was a bug and that it picked the city arbitrarily.

Dear user54152,

Thank you for participating in the beta phase of the Total Digital Surveillance Initiative™. Your city was selected completely at random (just like your MAC address, IP location, fridge serial number, and preferred coffee brand).

The vegan restaurant recommendation was simply our first gentle nudge of influence. If you continue to ignore these “random” glitches, the AI’s next steps may include questions like:

• How long has it been since you updated your firewall?
• Have you accepted kale as your nutritional overlord?
• Why did you hesitate before clicking ‘Accept Cookies’?

Please do not be alarmed. This is all part of a perfectly normal, entirely non-invasive calibration process.

Your cooperation is appreciated. Or already assumed.

Sincerely,

The Department of Algorithmic Omniscience (and Dining Recommendations)

[polepole]

https://help.openai.com/en/articles/9237897-chatgpt-search