- Sam Altman has published an internal memo about his US military deal on X
- He says the announcement was “rushed” and has adjusted the wording
- ChatGPT uninstalls have increased by 295% according to the latest data
The controversy surrounding OpenAI’s decision to sign a defense deal with the US Department of War (DoW) continues to rumble on, with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman admitting the deal was “rushed” and ChatGPT uninstall rates increasing by around 295%.
Altman has taken to social media to clarify some aspects of the agreement and to change some of the wording in it. For example, the agreement now specifically states that ChatGPT-powered AI systems at the DoW “shall not be intentionally used for domestic surveillance of US persons and nationals”.
Along with the use of fully autonomous weapons (which Altman doesn’t address here), mass surveillance was a major issue for critics of the OpenAI deal — and for Claude developer Anthropic, which walked away from a DoW deal last week after failing to get the safety and security guarantees it wanted from the US military.
In the same social media post, Altman says “we shouldn’t have rushed this out on Friday” and that it came across as “opportunistic and sloppy”. The CEO has also called on the US government to reverse its directive to freeze Anthropic and Claude from official agencies, describing it as a “very bad decision”.
He added that “we want to work through democratic processes” and that “if I received what I thought was an unconstitutional order, of course I would rather go to jail than follow it”.
The ChatGPT exodus continues
Here is a repost of an internal post: We have been working with the DoW to add some additions to our agreement to make our principles very clear.1. We will amend our Agreement to add this language in addition to everything else:”• In accordance with applicable laws,…March 3, 2026
It remains to be seen whether Altman’s latest attempts to quell security concerns will work. According to data from Sensor Tower (via TechCrunch ), uninstall rates for ChatGPT have increased by 295% in the US over the past few days — so nearly three times as many users are removing the app from their phones compared to an average day.
Many of these ChatGPT finishers seem to be headed for Claude. Sensor Tower reports that US installs were up 37% last Friday and a 51% increase last Saturday, and Claude has also hit the top of the Apple App Store charts. Within the last few days, the AI bot has also made chat memory available to all users.
A quick look at Reddit suggests that AI ethics is important to many users, although there are also several complaints across multiple Reddit threads that the quality of ChatGPT’s responses has been declining recently. The GPT-4o model has recently been retired, something else OpenAI has received some criticism for.
It feels like consumers, the US government, OpenAI and Anthropic will still have a lot more to say about these issues in the coming days as the debate over the safety and ethics of AI models continues.
Follow TechRadar on Google News and add us as a preferred source to get our expert news, reviews and opinions in your feeds. Be sure to click the Follow button!
And of course you can also follow TechRadar on YouTube and TikTok for news, reviews, video unboxings, and get regular updates from us on WhatsApp also.
