ChatGPT is now a potent tool for finding the locations of photos, raising doxxing concerns

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Some are concerned about the privacy implications and the potential for doxing.

Ai tool can quickly find location of a photo
(Image credit: Shutterstock)

With the release of its latest models earlier in the week, OpenAI seems to have inadvertently tuned ChatGPT to become a potent geo-guesser. The newly available o3 and o4-mini are so good at this ‘reverse location search’ task that showing off this newfound functionality has become a viral social media trend, notes TechCrunch. However, this apparent geographic needle-in-a-haystack hunting improvement raises privacy concerns. And pro geo-guessers on social media platforms might be a little worried too.

This newfound ability of ChatGPT is a great example of the strengthened visual reasoning being brought to the platform with model updates. It can now reason based on the content of uploaded images and perform some Photoshop-esque tasks like cropping, rotating, and zooming in.

As per the source report, there are plenty of examples of users of this famous AI chatbot now using it to drill down on the location of various images. A popular jape is to ask ChatGPT to imagine it is playing the online GeoGuessr game and provide the answer based on supplied imagery. Below, we’ve embedded an example of ChatGPT's location divining skills, shared by AI enthusiast YouTuber and Twitterer Brendan Jowett.

As Jowett points out, the newly popular ChatGPT ‘reverse image search’ functionality has privacy implications, and raises particular concerns with regard to doxing. Doxing is publicly sharing someone’s private information, particularly location / residence, on the broad internet. People are commonly doxed with malicious intent, with the perpetrator hoping to direct loonies and cranks to visit upon the victim(s).

Interestingly, TechCrunch notes that ‘Geoguessr’ ability isn’t new for ChatGPT with the release of o3 and o4-mini. It is just the trend / awareness that has ballooned. It is said that o3 is particularly good at reverse location search, but GPT-4o, a model released without image-reasoning, can sometimes outpace o3, and deliver the same correct answer “more often than not,” says TechCrunch.

Before we go, it is worth mentioning that AI geo-guessing isn’t a totally dependable or 100% accurate function of ChatGPT with the latest models. That’s not surprising. Also, TechCrunch got a statement from OpenAI on its viral GeoGuessr success. In brief, the artificial intelligence pioneer said that, while it works to improve its tools with things like visual reasoning, it also spends time training models to refuse requests for private or sensitive information. Creative users may be able to sidestep safeguards for a time, but OpenAI indicated it will take action where it sees evidence of abuse of its usage policies.

Mark Tyson
Mark Tyson
News Editor

Mark Tyson is a news editor at Tom's Hardware. He enjoys covering the full breadth of PC tech; from business and semiconductor design to products approaching the edge of reason.

5 Comments Comment from the forums
  • bit_user
    This is nothing new, IMO. Google Image Search was already pretty good at that sort of thing, particularly if it was a location that's very distinctive.
    Reply
  • Konomi
    bit_user said:
    This is nothing new, IMO. Google Image Search was already pretty good at that sort of thing, particularly if it was a location that's very distinctive.
    True - anyone who has dabbled with OSINT is aware there is already plenty of tools you can use to achieve the same result. It just turns out ChatGPT can be added to the list of tools for the job. Same advice applies here anyway - don't share information publicly that could lead to doxxing or other issues, and if you must share information, ensure your privacy settings on various platforms don't let any random person view it.
    Reply
  • usertests
    Sounds like a good thing. Maybe you shouldn't share photos online.
    Reply
  • Findecanor
    > ... strengthened visual reasoning ...

    ChatGPT does no such thing. Artificial "neural networks" are statistics-machines, nothing else.
    Please stop attributing them with anthropomorphic attributes that they don't have!
    Reply
  • bit_user
    Findecanor said:
    > ... strengthened visual reasoning ...

    ChatGPT does no such thing. Artificial "neural networks" are statistics-machines, nothing else.
    No, you can't build something that does what they do with mere statistical methods. Their reliance on stochastic mechanisms is roughly similar to your brain, given their design is very abstractly modeled on the structure and function of biological brains.

    And yes, it's totally valid to say they can perform reasoning. In fact, there are methods for quantifying exactly how well they're doing at it. Here's a set of benchmarks that HuggingFace has used to compare LLM performance, in their LLM LeaderBoard:
    https://huggingface.co/docs/leaderboards/open_llm_leaderboard/about
    I should note that it's a little bit dated and they're apparently no longer updating the leaderboard.
    Reply