11–20 of 32 posts
Another curious behavior here is: LLMs are eager to use information available to them, even when it's completely irrelevant.
Every service on the Internet knows its users' IP addresses. It's a very short trip for an interested party to convert an IP address to whatever it is that IP geolocation means today in 2025, where we even have things like RFC 8805 that seek to promote the active dissemination of that information. What aspects of this blanket reality serve to make ChatGPT uniquely concerning, or even interesting?
It's not transparent and, in some instances, leads to worse outputs. ChatGPT keeps telling me "since you are in Ireland, you can ..." when I'm not in Ireland, that's just what my VPN is set to. At least on a normal site, it will usually ask "You're currently visiting the UK site, do you want to switch to our Irish/EU site"? Here, it just makes the assumption with no indication of it happening.
BA doesn't even ask, just immediately switches to the language it assumes matches the geolocation of the IP address you're connecting from...
More details here: https://embracethered.com/blog/posts/2025/chatgpt-how-does-c...
Verified this is a thing. I asked it where I am and how it figured that out. It said it does not have access to my device’s GPS, IP address, or any other identifying information. I then asked it for specific food locations near me and it listed them with pictures and the name of the town. I was never prompted to provide location information which my browser will prompt me if it is requested. My cookies are only from…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not transparent and, in some instances, leads to worse outputs. ChatGPT keeps telling me "since you are in Ireland, you can ..." when I'm not in Ireland, that's just what my VPN is set to. At least on a normal site, it will usually ask "You're currently visiting the UK site, do you want to switch to our Irish/EU site"? Here, it just makes the assumption with no indication of it happening.
> At least on a normal site, it will usually ask [...] BA doesn't even ask, just immediately switches to the language it assumes matches the geolocation of the IP address you're connecting from...
I was on Windows and wanted an offline installer for Linux. It's impossible.
Every service on the Internet knows its users' IP addresses. It's a very short trip for an interested party to convert an IP address to whatever it is that IP geolocation means today in 2025, where we even have things like RFC 8805 that seek to promote the active dissemination of that information. What aspects of this blanket reality serve to make ChatGPT uniquely concerning, or even interesting?
It's not transparent and, in some instances, leads to worse outputs. ChatGPT keeps telling me "since you are in Ireland, you can ..." when I'm not in Ireland, that's just what my VPN is set to. At least on a normal site, it will usually ask "You're currently visiting the UK site, do you want to switch to our Irish/EU site"? Here, it just makes the assumption with no indication of it happening.
Google will automatically show me results in Finnish, personalized to what Finnish users typically search for. It does have a sidebar to prompt me to switch back to English, but that's because I put in an English query.
Netflix shows me the content that's available in Finland, along with recommendations for top movies in Finland. No option to switch back to U.S.
Reddit, when logged out, defaults me to content from r/arkisuomi, r/suomi, r/finland, and then the default subreddits. Also no indication that they've changed their recommendations.
Expedia defaults me to the U.S, but with a banner to switch to expedia.fi instead.
Zillow has no personalized content on their logged-out homepage, but if I try to search for "Current location" it will show me homes in Finland. Same with Redfin.
Yelp defaults my language to Finnish and shows me recommendations for Helsinki.
Isn't this a large part of why people get VPNs, so they can see what content looks like for visitors from other countries? I got one mainly so I could watch Canadian Netflix and so travel sites would stop charging me California prices (they often price-discriminate based on average incomes in your region).
Why are you worried GPT knows your location? If you use any Apple stuff, it knows your exact location. Android is the same. Windows knows the exact location also. So why would not GPT know that? Most webpages know your location, but since they also know your IP, they know in where you are, the city name at least, within a few KM. You are talking about the location. You should be worried about using Apple, Android or…
Imagine it telling someone "picking cotton" is a fine job, with some hidden knowledge about that person's ethnicity – with ChatGPT denying it used that information even when asked.
Do you see now how easily this gets problematic?
Why are you worried GPT knows your location? If you use any Apple stuff, it knows your exact location. Android is the same. Windows knows the exact location also. So why would not GPT know that? Most webpages know your location, but since they also know your IP, they know in where you are, the city name at least, within a few KM. You are talking about the location. You should be worried about using Apple, Android or…
The surprise isn't that OpenAI can figure out your location if they want to. The surprise is that OpenAI puts your location in ChatGPT's system prompt.
I tried to replicate it as well, could not.
İt happened when I asked for weather, maybe someone can replicate it.