ChatGPT
General-purpose assistant with optional web search and Deep Research; search answers can link to web sources.
Score calculation
(4 + 4 + 6 + 2 + 4 + 3) ÷ 6 = 3.8
6 of six dimensions rated. Unrated dimensions are excluded from the average.
Full scoring method ↗Setup details
ChatGPT: cloud access. Free tier; paid plans available; see current pricing. Ratings describe the stated product, company or configuration in each finding.
What fits your needs
Consumer ChatGPT web and mobile; product limits and available models vary by plan, account and region.
Tasks
A broad assistant for drafting, analysis, file work, web search and image creation; Search and Deep Research can expose links to source pages.
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Access and billing
A free plan is available; paid plans add access and higher or different tool limits. Usage allowances are model- and feature-specific and can change.
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Tradeoffs to expect
Route
Consumer web and mobile requests run through OpenAI-hosted services; the selected model and feature can vary. The consumer app does not offer a local-only inference mode.
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Privacy controls
Personal-workspace training controls are separate from Memory; Temporary Chats can be kept up to 30 days for safety, and feedback may be used for training.
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How to switch
Get started
Use the web app or install the official mobile app, create or sign in to an account, and select a plan in Settings if current free limits do not fit.
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Practical questions
Age and sensitive use
OpenAI terms set a minimum age of 13 or local consent age and require parent/guardian permission under 18. Service terms say ChatGPT is not intended to diagnose or treat health conditions.
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Likeness and privacy
Visual Capabilities may not be used to identify people or infer private/sensitive information; reproducing a person’s likeness requires express consent and necessary rights.
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Report responses and manage files
Use thumbs-down to report a response. Library files are stored separately from chats; deleting a chat does not delete a separate Library copy.
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OpenAI reports future data-center capacity and project-level energy/water plans; these are corporate/project disclosures, not a ChatGPT request footprint. The app gives users model and reasoning controls, but no current query-level energy, carbon, water, or clean-power data.
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The company’s PORTS-Pike announcement reports about 8 GW-IT of future capacity, expected new generation including gas, and a later public water report. It does not allocate that site to ChatGPT requests or quantify current product use. ChatGPT’s model picker and auto-switch controls provide multiple practical demand choices, but do not demonstrate physical savings. Grade company-project disclosure separately from the product route; no actual ChatGPT footprint is established.
1 + 1 reporting + 0 electricity + 2 controls = 4/10. This grade covers documented practices and transparency; it does not measure the energy or emissions of a request.
ChatGPT serving facilities/regions and model routing; workload kWh, emissions and water; whether small/fast model choices reduce physical use; hourly clean-power sourcing; upstream hardware and construction impact.
- Reporting1/3
- OpenAI describes large planned data-center capacity, project power/water plans, and future infrastructure, but gives no dated measured energy/carbon/water for ChatGPT prompts.
- Electricity sourcing0/3
- No clean-power mix or hourly/location-matched source is established for the ChatGPT serving route.
- Resource controls2/3
- ChatGPT offers model/reasoning choices from Instant through higher reasoning levels and users can configure automatic switching. These are real workload-choice controls, but no energy reduction is measured.
Water disclosure
OpenAI has announced project-level water planning for future data-center capacity, but the reviewed materials don’t confirm measured water use for ChatGPT, the API, or an individual request.
The cited announcement concerns a planned infrastructure project. It doesn’t show operational water totals or map future capacity to a specific AI product or request.
OpenAI discloses broad public, licensed/partner, human-provided and synthetic source classes, and describes filtering. The record is useful at company/family level but does not identify a complete training dataset for the ChatGPT route.
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The score gives limited credit for named source classes and stated licensing/rights policy, while recognizing that the app can use different model versions and no inspectable release manifest is provided. Prompt data controls are excluded from the rights score.
1 + 1 source transparency + 1 permission + 1 creator controls = 4/10. This grades documented training-data safeguards, not a legal ruling.
Exact model selected, release-specific source records, permission coverage across the training data and creator remedies for already-collected works remain unclear.
- Source transparency1/3
- OpenAI names broad source categories and describes filtering, but does not expose a named-source inventory for each ChatGPT model.
- Documented permission1/4
- The company describes licensed partnerships alongside public data, leaving a material mixed training data unitemized.
- Creator controls1/2
- OpenAI documents that sites can disallow GPTBot to indicate crawled content should not be used to train foundation models; this is a narrow source-level crawler control, not a complete training dataset remedy.
Consumer conversations can be excluded from model improvement with a setting; Temporary Chat is not used for training and does not create memories.
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Published controls give users meaningful choice, while default consumer treatment, safety review and retention terms still matter.
ChatGPT is a hosted service. OpenAI says its Apache 2.0 gpt-oss weights can run locally, but explicitly says those models are not available in ChatGPT.
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The consumer app remains a hosted proprietary-model service; the independently downloadable gpt-oss models are a separate product and do not make ChatGPT open. This is a product-level rating.
OpenAI’s supplier code sets pay, safety and complaint rules for data workers. Public evidence of coverage and outcomes is limited.
See the evidence
The October 2026 Supplier Code applies to suppliers, staffing agencies, subcontractors and sub-tier suppliers, and explicitly covers annotation, moderation, evaluation and RLHF workers: it requires task-risk notice, breaks, exposure limits/support, task opt-out or escalation without retaliation, reasonable paid performance expectations, and supplier records that OpenAI may validate. A 2023 TIME investigation into the earlier Sama contract documented workers’ accounts of very low take-home pay and distressing work; Sama disputed key characterizations and said it offered extensive counseling, while OpenAI said it had understood workers could opt out and access support, and said vendors set pay and care. These historical claims and counterclaims do not verify the current code’s implementation, worker voice or outcomes.
1 + 1 pay & conditions + 1 worker voice & remedy + 1 evidence & follow-through = 4/10. This grades documented worker safeguards, not a measured rate of mistreatment.
The current code does not publish supplier-level audit results, pay distributions, annotator coverage, worker survey results or independent remediation outcomes. The Sama project ended in 2022; no current vendor footprint is established.
- Pay & conditions1/3
- The October 2026 supplier code sets specific conditions for human-data workers, but it is a written requirement rather than evidence of current implementation. The only cited implementation account is the historical GPT-4-era work; TIME’s 2022 Sama reporting documented worker concerns and OpenAI/Sama disputed or qualified key claims.
- Worker voice & remedy1/3
- The current code requires channels to pause, decline or escalate unsafe tasks without retaliation, but no public evidence verifies a current feedback channel’s use or outcomes. Historical reporting records workers raising concerns and the vendor/customer responses, not current implementation.
- Evidence & follow-through1/3
- The code requires suppliers to retain worker and contract records and cooperate with OpenAI or authorized third-party validation on reasonable request, but OpenAI publishes no worker-specific audit results or independent outcomes.
OpenAI describes a classified Department of War agreement with cloud-only deployment, named technical and personnel safeguards, and explicit restrictions, while lawful military use remains permitted.
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The March 2026 agreement permits lawful purposes and classified deployment, so this is broad defense enablement; the public agreement does not identify actual targeting, weapons, or combat-intelligence deployments. It bars directing autonomous weapons and domestic surveillance of U.S. persons, including commercial personal data, and disallows high-stakes automated decisions where human approval is required. OpenAI says it retains the safety stack, deploys only through its cloud, uses classifiers and cleared personnel in the loop, and may terminate for breach. These are concrete company-described safeguards, but no independent enforcement outcomes are public, and the March amendment says NSA service would require a separate agreement.
1 + 1 use restrictions + 2 enforcement & oversight + 2 relationship disclosure = 6, capped at 3/10. Known defense ties lower this rating; safeguards can improve it within the relationship’s cap.
The public agreement does not list task orders, deployed model versions, users, operational workflows, audit outcomes, or whether guardrails have been independently tested in use. Contract permission and deployment of a specific model version are not established here.
- Use restrictions1/4
- The contract explicitly excludes autonomous weapon direction, domestic surveillance of U.S. persons, and specified unapproved high-stakes decisions, but lawful military activity remains authorized and not all harmful surveillance/weapon uses are categorically barred.
- Enforcement & oversight2/3
- The agreement describes cloud-only deployment, OpenAI-controlled safety stack and classifiers, cleared staff in the loop, and termination rights; these are use-specific contractual and technical review mechanisms, with no independent outcome evidence.
- Relationship disclosure2/2
- OpenAI publishes the agreement’s scope, restrictions, architecture and NSA carve-out; it still does not disclose deployed mission/use-level details.
A classified DoW contract authorizes broad lawful use, but the public evidence describes no actual targeting, strike, or combat-intelligence support; broad-defense cap applies. The relationship limits this grade to 3/10.
Military rubric ↗No named target found in the two checked BNC campaign lists.
See the evidence
Company name checked against the BNC consumer boycott/pressure guide and official No Tech campaign list; no named target found. This limited list check is not BDS approval and does not cover every campaign, subsidiary, supplier, or product route.
ChatGPT: Image generation & editing
Cloud image generation and editing inside ChatGPT, powered by Images 2.5; consumer data use depends on account settings.
Score calculation
(2 + 3 + 5 + 2 + 4 + 3) ÷ 6 = 3.2
6 of six dimensions rated. Unrated dimensions are excluded from the average.
Full scoring method ↗OpenAI documents the hosted image-generation system and consumer controls, but publishes no image-task electricity, emissions, or water measurement.
See the evidence
OpenAI documents the hosted image-generation system and consumer controls, but publishes no image-task electricity, emissions, or water measurement. The score describes documented measurement transparency and available controls, not environmental performance.
1 + 1 reporting + 0 electricity + 0 controls = 2/10. This grade covers documented practices and transparency; it does not measure the energy or emissions of a request.
The system card does not quantify training or per-image inference energy, emissions, or water, identify the serving region, or disclose the image workload’s electricity sourcing.
- Reporting1/3
- The system card identifies the ChatGPT Images 2.5 model/system boundary; it supplies no quantified environmental report or inference-region allocation.
- Electricity sourcing0/3
- No electricity sourcing is established for ChatGPT Images 2.5 in the ChatGPT consumer product.
- Resource controls0/3
- The interface documents aspect-ratio selection and iterative edits, but the reviewed consumer documentation doesn’t show an adjustable generation-count, quality, resolution or effort budget. Output shape alone doesn’t confirm a resource-limiting control.
Water disclosure
OpenAI has announced project-level water planning for future data-center capacity, but the reviewed materials don’t confirm measured water use for ChatGPT, the API, or an individual request.
The cited announcement concerns a planned infrastructure project. It doesn’t show operational water totals or map future capacity to a specific AI product or request.
OpenAI’s current launch page identifies the image feature and safety/provenance controls; its training summary describes broad system-wide public, partner, human and synthetic data, including image modalities, but gives no image-model training data manifest.
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The identified OpenAI image feature is gradeable only at the provider-system level: broad sources and rights claims are documented, while the exact image-model base, training stages and permissions are not. Output provenance marks don’t settle training rights.
1 + 1 source transparency + 1 permission + 0 creator controls = 3/10. This grades documented training-data safeguards, not a legal ruling.
OpenAI has not mapped the current image model to a complete source inventory or documented its exact inherited base-model training recipe.
- Source transparency1/3
- The provider gives broad image-inclusive system data categories but no specific image model dataset inventory.
- Documented permission1/4
- OpenAI describes licensed partnerships alongside public sources, without model-specific permission coverage for this image route.
- Creator controls0/2
- The reviewed image and training disclosures don’t confirm creator remedies for the exact image-generation training data.
For consumer ChatGPT, prompts and images may be used to improve models depending on Data Controls; users can opt out for new conversations.
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This score applies to the consumer ChatGPT configuration. Content remains stored on OpenAI and service-provider systems, and authorized access can occur for stated support, safety, legal, or improvement purposes.
ChatGPT Images is documented as a feature of the hosted ChatGPT service. OpenAI publishes a system card, but the image model weights and implementation are not released for inspection or self-hosting.
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The product offers useful capability documentation while keeping the model and inference service proprietary. Users cannot inspect or move this model to their own infrastructure, so it fits the low openness range.
OpenAI’s supplier code sets pay, safety and complaint rules for data workers. Public evidence of coverage and outcomes is limited.
See the evidence
The October 2026 Supplier Code applies to suppliers, staffing agencies, subcontractors and sub-tier suppliers, and explicitly covers annotation, moderation, evaluation and RLHF workers: it requires task-risk notice, breaks, exposure limits/support, task opt-out or escalation without retaliation, reasonable paid performance expectations, and supplier records that OpenAI may validate. A 2023 TIME investigation into the earlier Sama contract documented workers’ accounts of very low take-home pay and distressing work; Sama disputed key characterizations and said it offered extensive counseling, while OpenAI said it had understood workers could opt out and access support, and said vendors set pay and care. These historical claims and counterclaims do not verify the current code’s implementation, worker voice or outcomes.
1 + 1 pay & conditions + 1 worker voice & remedy + 1 evidence & follow-through = 4/10. This grades documented worker safeguards, not a measured rate of mistreatment.
The current code does not publish supplier-level audit results, pay distributions, annotator coverage, worker survey results or independent remediation outcomes. The Sama project ended in 2022; no current vendor footprint is established.
- Pay & conditions1/3
- The October 2026 supplier code sets specific conditions for human-data workers, but it is a written requirement rather than evidence of current implementation. The only cited implementation account is the historical GPT-4-era work; TIME’s 2022 Sama reporting documented worker concerns and OpenAI/Sama disputed or qualified key claims.
- Worker voice & remedy1/3
- The current code requires channels to pause, decline or escalate unsafe tasks without retaliation, but no public evidence verifies a current feedback channel’s use or outcomes. Historical reporting records workers raising concerns and the vendor/customer responses, not current implementation.
- Evidence & follow-through1/3
- The code requires suppliers to retain worker and contract records and cooperate with OpenAI or authorized third-party validation on reasonable request, but OpenAI publishes no worker-specific audit results or independent outcomes.
OpenAI describes a classified Department of War agreement with cloud-only deployment, named technical and personnel safeguards, and explicit restrictions, while lawful military use remains permitted.
See the evidence
The March 2026 agreement permits lawful purposes and classified deployment, so this is broad defense enablement; the public agreement does not identify actual targeting, weapons, or combat-intelligence deployments. It bars directing autonomous weapons and domestic surveillance of U.S. persons, including commercial personal data, and disallows high-stakes automated decisions where human approval is required. OpenAI says it retains the safety stack, deploys only through its cloud, uses classifiers and cleared personnel in the loop, and may terminate for breach. These are concrete company-described safeguards, but no independent enforcement outcomes are public, and the March amendment says NSA service would require a separate agreement.
1 + 1 use restrictions + 2 enforcement & oversight + 2 relationship disclosure = 6, capped at 3/10. Known defense ties lower this rating; safeguards can improve it within the relationship’s cap.
The public agreement does not list task orders, deployed model versions, users, operational workflows, audit outcomes, or whether guardrails have been independently tested in use. Contract permission and deployment of a specific model version are not established here.
- Use restrictions1/4
- The contract explicitly excludes autonomous weapon direction, domestic surveillance of U.S. persons, and specified unapproved high-stakes decisions, but lawful military activity remains authorized and not all harmful surveillance/weapon uses are categorically barred.
- Enforcement & oversight2/3
- The agreement describes cloud-only deployment, OpenAI-controlled safety stack and classifiers, cleared staff in the loop, and termination rights; these are use-specific contractual and technical review mechanisms, with no independent outcome evidence.
- Relationship disclosure2/2
- OpenAI publishes the agreement’s scope, restrictions, architecture and NSA carve-out; it still does not disclose deployed mission/use-level details.
A classified DoW contract authorizes broad lawful use, but the public evidence describes no actual targeting, strike, or combat-intelligence support; broad-defense cap applies. The relationship limits this grade to 3/10.
Military rubric ↗Categorical check of the BNC campaign guide and No Tech campaign page; absence from these named-target pages is not BDS approval.
See the evidence
No named target for this company was found in the two checked BNC sources as of 2026-10-24. This is a narrow list check, not BDS approval, and it does not capture unlisted relationships or partners.
What fits your needs
ChatGPT consumer image creation/editing capability; this context inherits ChatGPT account, plan, privacy and route conditions.
Tasks
Create or edit images from text prompts and uploaded references inside ChatGPT; free and paid plans have different generation limits.
See the evidence
Provenance
ChatGPT image outputs include C2PA provenance metadata according to OpenAI's product FAQ.
See the evidence
Tradeoffs to expect
Route
Generation runs through OpenAI-hosted models in ChatGPT; image models and allowances can vary by product state and plan.
See the evidence
How to switch
Get started
Open a ChatGPT conversation, choose image creation or attach an image to edit, and check the displayed plan allowance before repeated generation.
See the evidence
Practical questions
Age and image boundary
OpenAI terms require users 13+ or local consent age and parent/guardian permission under 18. Image/video rules prohibit identifying people or reproducing a likeness without express consent and rights.
See the evidence
Consent and sensitive imagery
OpenAI usage rules prohibit non-consensual intimate content and use of a person’s realistic image or voice without consent in ways that could confuse authenticity.
See the evidence
Provenance
ChatGPT says generated images include C2PA provenance metadata; downstream removal/unavailability is possible and metadata is not proof of truth or training permission.
See the evidence
All sources
- How ChatGPT learns about the world while protecting privacy ↗
- Data Controls FAQ ↗
- Research with ChatGPT ↗
- ChatGPT plans and pricing ↗
- OpenAI joins PORTS-Pike project ↗
- TIME investigation: OpenAI and Kenyan workers ↗
- Our agreement with the Department of War ↗
- BNC consumer boycott and pressure guide ↗
- BNC No Tech campaign ↗
- OpenAI Supplier Code of Conduct ↗
- Mophat Okinyi: TIME100 AI 2024 ↗
- Bringing ChatGPT to GenAI.mil ↗
- OpenAI open-weight models (gpt-oss) ↗
- Introducing gpt-oss ↗
- ChatGPT official site ↗
- ChatGPT Images 2.5 System Card ↗
- Data Usage for Consumer Services FAQ ↗
- OpenAI Service Terms ↗
- ChatGPT release notes: model picker and reasoning controls ↗
- Controlling the length of OpenAI model responses ↗
- Images in ChatGPT ↗
- Training Data Summary under California Civil Code Section 3111 ↗
- How ChatGPT and our foundation models are developed ↗
- Overview of OpenAI Crawlers ↗
- Introducing ChatGPT Images 2.5 ↗
- GPT-4 Technical Report ↗
- Our agreement with the Department of War ↗
- Sama and Content Moderation: What You Need to Know ↗
- What is ChatGPT: FAQ ↗
- Data controls in ChatGPT ↗
- Chat and file retention in ChatGPT ↗
- Usage policies ↗
- Models and usage limits ↗
- Openai Terms ↗
- Openai Svc ↗
- Openai Report ↗
- Openai Library ↗