India was the first country where real users were exposed to GPT-4 without their knowledge, according to an investigation published on April 7 by The New Yorker.
The report by journalists Ronan Farrow and Andrew Marantz states that Microsoft quietly tested GPT-4 in 2022 through its Bing search engine, making India an early, unknowing test market.
The investigation is based on more than 100 interviews and internal documents, including memos from Ilya Sutskever and Dario Amodei.
According to the report, the deployment bypassed a joint safety board set up by OpenAI and Microsoft to review AI systems before release. OpenAI had reportedly advised against the test, but Microsoft proceeded without clearance.
The move was also not disclosed to OpenAI’s leadership at the time. Board member Tasha McCauley was informed informally after a board meeting, while CEO Sam Altman did not mention the deployment during the session. Researcher Jacob Hilton described the incident as having been “kind of completely ignored.”
Microsoft initially denied that GPT-4 was used in the India tests, with spokesperson Frank Shaw telling The New York Times that the model was not involved. However, following the publication of the New Yorker investigation, the company confirmed that GPT-4 had been tested on Bing in India.
The report notes that the disclosure comes as India has emerged as a major market for AI tools, with around 180 million monthly users of ChatGPT and rapid growth in generative AI app downloads.
On February 19, 2026, Sam Altman spoke at an AI summit in New Delhi, calling for the creation of an international body to regulate artificial intelligence.