The maker of ChatGPT on Friday opened a preview that lets paying U.S. users link their bank, brokerage and credit card accounts to the chatbot.
OpenAI Plaid Partnership
The feature, restricted to ChatGPT Pro subscribers in the United States, was unveiled by OpenAI in a blog post. It runs on a partnership with Plaid, the connection service used by more than 12,000 financial institutions, including Chase, Fidelity, Schwab, Robinhood, American Express and Capital One.
Once an account is hooked up, ChatGPT shows a dashboard of spending, subscriptions, upcoming payments and portfolio performance.
The chatbot can read balances, transactions, investments and liabilities through Plaid, but it cannot view full account numbers or move money on a user's behalf. Pro users can launch the tool from a Finances tab in the sidebar.
The launch follows OpenAI's April acquisition of personal finance startup Hiro, whose team helped shape the new product. Integration with Intuit is coming, the company said, eventually allowing tax estimates and live sessions with local tax experts inside the app.
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Expert Privacy Warnings
OpenAI says more than 200 million users already ask it financial questions every month. The move drew sharp pushback from security researchers, who argue the company has not detailed how it will defend the new data flow against advanced hacks.
University of Illinois associate computer science professor Gang Wang told CNN this week, before the announcement, that documents fed into chatbots could be exposed if they end up in training data.
The concern is concrete: a hacker who pulls a user's transaction history could craft a phishing message naming the exact merchant, date and amount of a recent purchase. Trust is already a sore point, with OpenAI facing a class action in California over claims it shared prompts and user IDs with Google and Meta tracking tools without consent.
ChatGPT Pro $200 Rollout
Synced data is removed within 30 days of disconnection, and users can wipe stored financial memories from the Finances tab. Temporary chats cannot access the linked accounts. The safeguards lean on user vigilance.
OpenAI plans to extend the tool to Plus subscribers later, after gathering feedback from the Pro tier, which costs $200 a month.
The rollout caps a year in which OpenAI has expanded into shopping, browsing and health features, with chief executive Sam Altman framing ChatGPT as an everyday assistant rather than a search box.
The company is also locked in litigation with Elon Musk, where unearthed testimony has been used to question Altman's credibility, and is preparing for an IPO that will test public appetite for its data practices.
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