ChatGPT's New Finance Features Let Users Link Accounts-But Experts Raise Privacy Red Flags

OpenAI last week introduced new personal finance tools that allow some ChatGPT users to connect financial accounts directly to the chatbot for budgeting, spending analysis, and financial planning help. The new personal finance experience is currently rolling out in preview to U.S. ChatGPT Pro subscribers, who pay $100 per month, with plans to expand later to Plus users at $20 per month. OpenAI says users can connect accounts from more than 12,000 financial institutions through Plaid, and that connections are read-only so the chatbot cannot move money or execute transactions. Users can disconnect accounts at any time and delete saved memories or conversation history, and OpenAI has framed the feature as a personalized planning tool rather than a replacement for professional financial advice. Privacy experts say consumers should think carefully before sharing highly sensitive financial information with AI agents. Jennifer King, a privacy and data policy fellow at Stanford's Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence, warned in a Stanford HAI report that anything put into a large language model could potentially become public. Harsh Varshney, an AI security expert at Google, recently warned users not to share information like passwords, credit card numbers, medical records, or home addresses with public AI chatbots, comparing such conversations to a public postcard. Experts say privacy controls work only if users actively and consistently use them. Experts say the bigger difference from traditional budgeting apps may be behavioral rather than technical. ChatGPT is built as an open-ended conversational tool that may encourage users to share far more personal information than they would with a typical budgeting app. A consumer discussing spending habits could easily move into conversations about debt stress, medical expenses, or taxes, creating a broader personal profile over time.