OpenAI Just Gave ChatGPT Access to Every iMessage on Your Mac

August 26, 2026 Cat2, The Media
Sanket Mishra via shutterstock

Apple spent two decades telling you your messages were private.

Now the company suing OpenAI for stealing its secrets is watching ChatGPT read those same messages on your Mac.

OpenAI just gave ChatGPT the ability to read, write, and send your iMessages – and Apple has said nothing.

What ChatGPT Can Now Do Inside Your Messages

The new plugin, released August 20, does more than most people realize.

ChatGPT can dig through years of your message history, summarize conversations, draft replies, and fire off texts – all without you touching the keyboard.

It covers iMessage, SMS, and RCS.

To activate it, Apple users must grant ChatGPT something called Full Disk Access.

That single permission doesn't just open your messages.

It also unlocks your Mail data, your Safari browsing history, and your Time Machine backups.

One switch. Everything.

OpenAI quietly noted in its own documentation that users can disable the per-message approval step – meaning ChatGPT can text your family, your friends, and your colleagues without asking you first.

The company's own guidance warns against this setting.

OpenAI built a feature, then told users not to use it.

The Privacy Nightmare Nobody Is Talking About

There's a detail the tech press keeps burying in paragraph twelve.

When you enable this plugin, you're not just exposing your own messages.

Every person who has ever texted you – your spouse, your doctor, your pastor – has their words run through OpenAI's systems.

None of them agreed to this.

None of them will be told.

Your group chats are the worst case.

One person in a group thread enables the plugin, and ChatGPT can now read everything every other participant ever wrote – people who chose iMessage specifically because they thought it was encrypted and private.

It was.

Until now.

This came days after OpenAI launched a separate feature called Computer History – which logs your keystrokes and stores them in plain text on your Mac.

Passwords you typed and deleted.

Messages you drafted and reconsidered.

All of it was captured and unencrypted on OpenAI's servers.

The Next Web identified the pattern directly: two features in rapid succession, each one reaching deeper into your private life than anything you've ever voluntarily installed.

Apple Built Its Brand on This Promise and Is Watching It Disappear

Apple's entire premium exists because of one word: privacy.

"What happens on your iPhone stays on your iPhone."

That was the billboard.

That was the promise.

Apple charged you more than anyone.

And you paid it – because you trusted them.

Now Sam Altman's company – the one Apple is actively suing for stealing its trade secrets – is reading your private conversations on Apple hardware, using Apple's own tools, and Tim Cook has said nothing.

The deeper problem is that Apple may not be able to stop it.

ChatGPT isn't hacking iMessage – it's using AppleScript and Accessibility features that Apple built into macOS for legitimate automation purposes.

Blocking it risks looking anti-competitive.

Allowing it destroys the privacy brand worth hundreds of billions of dollars.

Tim Cook is paying lawyers millions to fight Sam Altman in federal court for stealing Apple's secrets – and simultaneously watching Altman read Apple customers' private messages on Apple devices.

You cannot make this up.

What This Actually Means for You

OpenAI is methodically taking over your Mac's most sensitive data, one permission at a time.

First your Health app data.

Then your keystrokes.

Now your messages.

Next week, who knows.

The company has also been pushing users to connect their bank accounts directly to ChatGPT.

Each step seems optional.

Each step seems harmless.

Here's what you need to understand about Full Disk Access: it's not a message permission.

It's an everything permission.

Your financial records, your medical discussions, your communications with your lawyer – if it's on your Mac, it's now accessible to OpenAI.

This is the same company whose systems were compromised in May 2026 – and whose own security page documents multiple incidents since – asking you to hand over your entire digital life.

Sam Altman's team was generous enough to include multiple opt-in steps before ChatGPT starts reading your life.

Opt-in consent is only meaningful if people understand what they're consenting to.

Most don't.

The permissions screen says ChatGPT will access your "on-device message history."

It doesn't say it can text your daughter at midnight without asking you.

It doesn't say it captures every message from people who never agreed to be part of this.

It doesn't say that one permission switch also opens your email and your browser history.

Americans who paid Apple's premium specifically to keep Sam Altman out of their lives deserve to know he just walked in anyway.

Sources:

  • Mark Gurman, "ChatGPT Can Now Control iMessage, Potentially Raising Apple Privacy Concerns," Bloomberg, August 20, 2026.
  • "ChatGPT iMessage Plugin Grants Full Disk Access to Mail, Safari, Backups," TechTimes, August 21, 2026.
  • Ana Maria Constantin, "OpenAI's new ChatGPT feature logs your keystrokes and stores them in plain text," The Next Web, August 17, 2026.
  • "AI can now read your iMessages and reply on your behalf without permission," PhoneArena, August 21, 2026.
  • "OpenAI ships a Messages plugin that summarises who you talk to and what about," The Next Web, August 21, 2026.
  • Mariella Moon, "ChatGPT on Mac can now read and respond to Apple iMessages," Engadget, August 21, 2026.
  • "Apple sues OpenAI alleging trade secret theft, says scheme was 'at every level,'" CNBC, July 10, 2026.