Privacy fatigue and its effects on ChatGPT acceptance among undergraduate students: is privacy dead?

OpenAI’s generative pre-trained transformer (ChatGPT) is rapidly transforming fields such as education and becoming an integral part of our daily lives. However, its rise has sparked intense privacy debates, raising concerns about the storage of personal information and attracting global regulatory scrutiny. ChatGPT is gaining popularity among undergraduate students owing to its personalized learning capabilities, leading many universities to provide guidelines and seminars on its use. Curiosity about the reasons for ChatGPT’s popularity inspired our research. Through a survey of 695 undergraduate students in South Korea, we found that “privacy fatigue”—a feeling of hopelessness and weariness regarding privacy—was associated with these students’ adoption of ChatGPT. The findings revealed that this fatigue reduces perceived privacy risks, enhances their expectations of the platform, and boosts their intention to use ChatGPT. By incorporating the concepts of privacy fatigue, perceived risk, and elements from the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology, we developed a novel model to understand this phenomenon. Interestingly, despite the potential risks, the intention to use ChatGPT was not significantly influenced by perceived risk. This study contributes to a better understanding of undergraduate students’ privacy perceptions when leveraging ChatGPT in education.