Mac Saying ChatGPT is Malware? Here’s Why & How to Fix It
A fair number of people who use the ChatGPT app for Mac have recently run into a strange and alarming malware message when attempting to open and use ChatGPT. The error says that “Malware Blocked and Moved to Trash” and informs the user that “ChatGPT.app was not opened because it contains malware. The action did not harm your Mac.”
These concerning malware messages have caused a lot of distress to some Mac users who are concerned their Mac or ChatGPT app has been compromised. But if you see this message on your Mac when you open ChatGPT, don’t be alarmed, because it’s almost certainly a false positive that has been triggered because you are running an older version of the ChatGPT app.
The precise error message you might see says something like this when you attempt to open ChatGPT: “Malware Blocked and Moved to Trash – “ChatGPT.app” was not opened because it contains malware. This action did not harm your Mac.”
Why does my Mac think ChatGPT is malware?
The reason this is happening is because OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, has revoked security certificates for older versions of the ChatGPT app for Mac due to a third party security incident. Basically this means the app no longer has a valid digital signature, and the MacOS built-in security and anti-malware features of Xprotect then flags the app as unsafe, which automatically places the app into the Trash to protect your Mac.
How to Fix the “ChatGPT.app Contains Malware” Error on Mac
- If you have already seen the error message that claims that ChatGPT contains malware, it will note that the malware has been blocked and moved to the Trash, thus, simply go empty the Trash on your Mac to delete the app (again, it does not actually contain malware, the error message is displaying due to an invalid certificate in the ChatGPT app)
- Next, you want to re-download the latest available version of ChatGPT directly from OpenAI at https://chatgpt.com/features/desktop/
- Optional but recommended, it’s good practice to update MacOS system software to the latest available version so that you have the latest security patches installed on your Mac
- Use ChatGPT as usual
That’s it, ChatGPT should be back in order and working again, and free of the malware warning.
If you’re on the techier side of things and feel like digging around in the Terminal, you can also manually check your Xprotect version to see if it has been updated recently, which a Mac will do periodically in the background, as long as it’s connected to the internet. You can also use a free third party tool like SilentKnight to check for and install Xprotect updates, but again if you keep your Mac up to date generally, and connected to the internet, it probably has the latest Xprotect versions installed already. MacOS is quite good at keeping away malware and similar junk, and the vast majority of users do not need to use any anti-virus or anti-malware apps or services.
The curious type might also be interested in the technical side of things from OpenAI’s end, why the certificate was revoked for older app versions, and what the risk was, which you can read about here on the OpenAI blog in an article titled “Our response to the TanStack npm supply chain attack”.
Have you encountered this scary looking malware ChatGPT error message on the Mac? Did you fix it? Share your experiences and thoughts in the comments.
