Many people end up sharing personal details when chatting with AI systems—but this is an area where extra caution is needed. In most generative AI tools, conversation history can be used to train the model, and in some cases, it may also be reviewed by human moderators.
By default, platforms like ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini collect conversation data. They do offer settings to prevent this, but you need to manually turn those options on. There have even been incidents where private conversations became publicly accessible—such as when some ChatGPT chats were indexed by Google search.
Why do AIs read your conversations?
The main reason companies give is to improve their AI models. Large Language Models (LLMs) require vast and diverse datasets, and user interactions provide valuable examples for fine-tuning responses. This review process can involve humans. Google’s Gemini policy, for instance, explicitly warns users not to share sensitive or private information they wouldn’t want a human reviewer—or Google itself—to see.
Which AIs avoid using chat history for training?
Some privacy-focused chatbots don’t use your conversations for model improvement. Anthropic’s Claude doesn’t train on user chats by default, although conversations reported to support can still be accessed. DuckDuckGo’s Duck.ai, which can switch between OpenAI, Meta, and Anthropic models, says it doesn’t store data. Proton’s Lumo also keeps chats private and doesn’t share them.
Others, like ChatGPT, Grok, and Perplexity, offer private or “temporary” modes that keep conversations out of the training dataset. Corporate editions of AI tools also typically avoid using chats for training, since they often contain sensitive company data.
Privacy features by platform:
| AI Service | Trains on chat history? | Can disable training? | Anonymous/Temporary mode? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gemini (Google) | ✅ Yes | ✅ Yes | ❌ No |
| ChatGPT (OpenAI) | ✅ Yes | ✅ Yes | ✅ Yes |
| Claude (Anthropic) | ❌ No | ❌ Not needed | ❌ No |
| Meta AI | ✅ Yes | ✅ Yes | ❌ No |
| Copilot (Microsoft) | ✅ Yes | ✅ Yes | ❌ No |
| Grok (xAI) | ✅ Yes | ✅ Yes | ✅ Yes |
| DeepSeek | ✅ Yes | ✅ Yes | ❌ No |
| Perplexity | ✅ Yes | ✅ Yes | ✅ Yes |
| Duck.ai (DuckDuckGo) | ❌ No | ❌ Not needed | ✅ Yes |
| Lumo (Proton) | ❌ No | ❌ Not needed | ✅ Yes |
If privacy is a priority, either choose an AI that doesn’t train on chats or turn on private mode before typing anything sensitive.
