Most people have typed their own name into Google at least once – curiosity usually gets the better of us. Old social media profiles, forgotten photographs, archived content, all can surface quite quickly, actually.
AI tools have introduced a different experience altogether. ChatGPT can gather publicly available information and turn it into a readable biography within seconds. That capability brings up questions on online identity and personal visibility.
Research from Cloaked had a look at how Americans view information on their names online. The company surveyed 1,057 U.S. adults and analysed Google search activity over two years from Jan 2024 to this February.
One finding immediately caught my attention. According to Cloaked, 47% of Americans did not know they could search themselves using ChatGPT or Gemini. Many people understand search engines but not many understand what AI can really do with publicly available information.
Interest in privacy has grown substantially during recent years. Cloaked found that AI privacy related searches came in 165% higher year on year. Searches related to Meta AI opt out requests came in 434% higher year on year.
Those search habits could be telling us growing public interest in understanding how personal information interacts with AI systems.
How Much Control Do People Feel They Have Online?
According to Cloaked, only 23% of Americans feel in control of what appears about them online. Half of Americans believe their personal information is more public than it should be.
Many people also have little understanding of what a search reveals about them. Cloaked found that 14% of Americans had no idea what would come up first if someone searched their name online.
About 2 in 5 Americans popped up on the first page of Google results when searching their own name – visibility and awareness were often very different experiences.
People who searched for themselves frequently located information quickly. Half of Americans who searched for personal details reported that information was easy to find. More than half of baby boomers reported outdated or irrelevant material attached to their search results.
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Removing information proved complicated for many respondents. According to Cloaked, 53% of Americans who attempted to remove personal information achieved either failure or mixed results.
Women expressed greater dissatisfaction with online visibility. Cloaked found that 57% of women believed their personal information was more publicly available than it should be and the equivalent number for men came in at 44%.
Are AI Searches Becoming A Digital Background Check?
Many people already research strangers before meeting them and dating apps are one example of that behaviour. According to Cloaked, 84% of dating app users checked someone’s social media before a first date. Artificial intelligence has entered that process as well.
Cloaked found that 22% of dating app users had used an AI tool to research someone before meeting them. That behaviour extended into professional settings too.
According to Cloaked, 18% of active job seekers had used an AI tool to research somebody before a professional meeting. Recruiters, hiring managers and networking contacts have access to exactly the same technology.
Digital reputation has some real consequences as 34% reported losing interest in someone after looking them up online. Nearly 1 in 5 active job seekers believed their digital footprint had cost them a job opportunity.
Those findings show how online information influences decisions long before any face to face conversation takes place.
What Happened When I Tried Searching A Real Person?
Reading the research made me curious about what ChatGPT would actually return.
I decided to search a relative’s name. Granted, he is an author, which meant public information already existed online.
Within seconds, ChatGPT produced a biography covering his career, professional background and public achievements. The response gathered information from public sources and organised everything into one place.
Nothing private surfaced during that search but nothing hidden surfaced either. Everything came from material already available online.
The difference came from speed and convenience because a traditional Google search would have required opening webpages, reading articles and collecting information manually but ChatGPT completed that process almost instantly.
That experience brought me back to one statistic from Cloaked’s research. Nearly half of Americans did not know they could search themselves using ChatGPT or Gemini.
Most people understand what Google knows about them. Many people have never considered what AI can assemble using publicly available information attached to their names.
Running that search therefore feels worthwhile… The results give a useful look at what strangers, recruiters, professional contacts – even potential dates – can learn before a single conversation begins.
