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GeoGPT: Data Security Risks

19 May 2025

Dear Editors

I welcome the opportunity to reply to Richard Chuchla and John Ludden’s letter (Clarifications around GeoGPT use, independence and governance, Geoscientist, 12 May 2025).

Prior to April 2025, the legal Terms of Service for the international version of the online GeoGPT Application (GeoGPT, 2025a; here after the ‘Terms’) explicitly stated that users “granted Zhejiang Lab an irrevocable perpetual, unrestricted global license to store and use the prompts” and “[Zhejiang Lab] reserve the right to store, use…the Outputs”. The Terms have changed significantly since my letter (GeoGPT: Concerns remain, Geoscientist, 4 April 2025) was published, perhaps in response to constructive criticisms voiced in various scientific publications. This clause has now been removed, but concerns around use remain.

Data storage and rights

Chuchla and Ludden state that GeoGPT does not store or retain user-uploaded content or data, yet the Terms retain a ‘cancellation clause’ (Clause 2.5.3) that states you “will lose access to all personal information, operation records, business data, and historical information under the account” (GeoGPT, 2025a). This implies that data uploaded by a user is stored and retained by the GeoGPT application. In addition, the international version of the GeoGPT online platform automatically runs tracking scripts, some storing personal information in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and adds persistent (6-month expiry) user behaviour tracking cookies for profiling, which are not essential. This is done without user consent, no cookie banner with opt-out, or transparency, in violation of data privacy laws in many countries and legal jurisdictions.

A new clause (4.2.3) in the updated Terms states “Subject to the license granted below and Our rights in the underlying Service and models, you retain all intellectual property rights in the content you upload or generate” (GeoGPT, 2025a), yet the Terms do not explicitly state what the license granted by the user to Zhejiang Lab is, or its limitations. Thus, issues around data storage and the rights granted on the outputs remain vague. Furthermore, the GeoGPT Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs; GeoGPT 2025b) state that outputs are monitored by staff at Zhejiang Lab, implying there is potential for outputs to be stored and retained.

Strategically important data

GeoGPT’s legal terms of use remain under the governing law of the PRC (GeoGPT, 2025a) and Zhejiang Lab is a state-affiliated, PRC entity that is subject to PRC data laws (which are considered more expansive and less constrained than many other countries). These laws mean that entities are compelled to cooperate with the PRC Government for access requests to data for intelligence gathering (Harrell, 2025). PRC law does not require users or the GeoGPT Governance Committee to be notified if Zhejiang Lab grants state actors access to data (indeed, notification may even be prohibited).

While Chuchla and Ludden note that Deep-time Digital Earth (DDE) and GeoGPT are now separately governed, DDE initiated GeoGPT and has a Memorandum of Understanding encouraging mutual promotion (MoU, 2025). DDE’s focus is the Global South, Africa in particular, with an emphasis on minerals and energy. For example, DDE highlight that GeoGPT could be used to better understand “the scope of research on critical minerals in West Africa for instance” and advocate for government departments to use GeoGPT to “scrutinise the proposals of investors (…from international mining companies)” (DDE, 2025).

Information of national strategic and economic importance may include critical minerals and oil and gas data. From a safeguarding perspective, it is important the international geoscientific community is aware of these potential risks of uploading documents, data and maps, not already in the public domain, to the GeoGPT application.

Author

Prof Paul H Cleverley FGS, Geologist and Computer Scientist, and Visiting Professor of Information Science & Technology at Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen, Scotland

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