ChatGPT Can Now Read and Send Your iPhone Texts — Here's What That Means

What the new plugin does

OpenAI has released a new add-on (a "plugin") that connects ChatGPT directly to the Messages app on your iPhone or Mac. Once enabled, you can ask ChatGPT to go through your texts, sort them, draft replies, or even send messages for you — instead of typing everything yourself.

For example, you could ask it to review yesterday's conversations and suggest a good follow-up message to a friend, or search old messages for information someone sent you weeks ago. The feature is available for both regular personal ChatGPT use and the business version of the product, so it works for both individuals and companies.

The privacy trade-off

For this to work, the plugin needs something called "Full Disk Access" on your device — a broad permission that lets it read files it normally wouldn't be able to touch. OpenAI says the plugin doesn't build up a huge permanent copy of all your messages, that it works locally on your own device rather than uploading everything, and that ChatGPT only looks at messages when you specifically ask it to.

Still, it's not entirely clear what information ends up being remembered or stored by ChatGPT after it processes such a request. That gray area is exactly why privacy-conscious users are cautious about turning this feature on.

The setting you should be careful with

The plugin lets you allow ChatGPT to automatically send messages without asking you to double-check each one first. OpenAI itself warns people not to enable that setting, since it removes your last chance to catch a mistake before a message goes out under your name. In other words: convenient, but worth thinking twice about before turning on "auto-send."