Professor loses two years of academic work after disabling ChatGPT data consent
A plant sciences professor at the University of Cologne reported that two years of academic work permanently disappeared from ChatGPT Plus after he disabled the platform's data consent setting in August. He had used the tool daily for grant applications, publication revisions, lectures, and other academic tasks, but was unable to recover the data despite attempting recovery steps and contacting OpenAI support.
What happened
Marcel Bucher, a plant sciences professor at the University of Cologne, reported that he lost two years of academic work after disabling the 'data consent' option in ChatGPT Plus in August. When he disabled the feature to test whether he would retain access to functions without providing data to OpenAI, all of his chats and project folders were immediately and permanently deleted with no warning or undo option.
Reported impact
Bucher reported losing carefully structured academic work spanning two years, including grant applications, publication revisions, lectures, exams, and email drafts. He had saved only partial copies of some conversations and materials, with large parts lost permanently.
Index analysis
Bucher wrote that he valued ChatGPT's ability to remember conversation context and the stability of the workspace. He relied on it daily as an assistant but acknowledged that large language models could be inaccurate and did not equate the tool's reliability with factual accuracy.
Governance controls
Bucher attempted to recover his data by reinstalling the app, trying different browsers, and adjusting settings further. He contacted OpenAI support but was initially routed to an AI agent that could not help, and a subsequent human representative was also unable to assist in data recovery.
Classification
Sources and evidence
Sources not yet published
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