by James M Dewar
This project is unfunded — depending on usage, rate limits may apply.

Maintaining privacy

Before you paste anything, know whether the service may use it to train its models. This guide finds the setting in your own account, then tests what you know about the main consumer services.

Steps

In the workshop, these steps are the exercise. You can also follow them on your own.

  1. Open the AI service you use most and find its training-data setting by following Step 1 · Finding the setting in any tool, below. Do not change the setting unless you want to.
  2. Note whether it is on or off for your account, and what kind of account it is: personal, or provided by your institution.
  3. Choose an answer for each service in Step 3 · Can you opt out of training? Unsure is a fair answer.
  4. Press Show me the answers, then read the explanation and open the source for each one you missed.

An opt-out limits one route of reuse. It does not by itself guarantee confidentiality, immediate deletion, institutional approval, or permission to share the material.

Step 1 · Finding the setting in any tool

People using the same product can have different privacy states. The brand name alone does not tell you what your account is doing.

  1. Open the settings. Look for Data controls, Privacy, or Data & privacy.
  2. Find the training control. It is usually worded as improving the model, or helping to improve it, rather than as training.
  3. No setting? Search the provider’s terms and privacy policy for “train” and “improve”. They may give an address to write to, or no choice at all.
  4. Check which account you are in. A work or education account usually has different terms from a personal one, set by your institution.
  5. Check what opting out costs. Some services stop training only if you also give up chat history, or only in temporary chats, and most keep using feedback you submit.

Step 3 · Can you opt out of training?

For each service, choose what an ordinary personal account can do about its chats being used to train the provider's models.

Opt-out available
A setting in your account stops your chats being used for training, and the product otherwise works as before.
In between
Not a clean yes or no: it depends on which version or account you are in, or it costs you chat history.
Opt-out unavailable
Ordinary chats are used and nothing in the app stops that for a personal account. A request by email, or a separate incognito mode, does not count.

  • ChatGPT OpenAI

  • Claude Anthropic

  • Copilot Microsoft

  • DeepSeek DeepSeek

  • Gemini Google

  • GLM (chat.z.ai) Z.ai

  • Grok xAI (SpaceXAI)

  • Kimi Moonshot AI

  • Meta AI Meta

  • Perplexity Perplexity AI

  • Qwen Alibaba

  • Vibe (formerly Le Chat) Mistral AI

Anything left at Choose… counts as unsure.

Answers are for personal accounts used in the United States, checked against each provider's own pages on 1 October 2026. Providers change these terms; open the source before you rely on one. Work and education accounts usually have different terms. Nothing you choose here is sent anywhere.

Inspect the result

  • Is the setting what you expected for your own account?
  • Does a work or education account you hold have different terms from your personal one?
  • For the services you got wrong: what does opting out cost, or leave in place?

Record

The setting you found, its state, and the account type it applies to.

When to use this

Before you provide material that is not public or not yours to share, and whenever you start using a new service or a new account.

Continue to Verification