How to stop your interactions with AI chatbots and social platforms being used to train AI models
Conversations people have with AI chatbots are potentially valuable data for companies looking to train future AI models.
Opting-out of having your data used in this way isn’t - unsurprisingly - very well signposted by the AI companies.
I get asked about how to opt-out on a fairly regular basis so am posting this short ‘how-to’ to point people to. I will endeavour to keep it up to date as and when the tech companies inevitably change the opt-out process.
ChatGPT
By default, any conversations you have with (or documents you upload to) the free or Plus versions of ChatGPT can be used by OpenAI to train future versions of ChatGPT. Opting out is easy but it’s tucked away under Settings with a slightly cheeky label. To opt out:
Click on your profile image (top right on web, bottom of the sidebar menu on app)
Select ‘Settings’ > ‘Data controls’ and toggle off ‘Improve the model for everyone’
Google Gemini
Google says it won’t use customer data to train its foundation models. However, it will use your data for other purposes, so you might still want to stop it saving your conversations for longer than the 72 hours it insists on. Here’s how you do it:
Click/tap the ‘Turn off’ drop-down (*terrible interaction design pattern alert*)
Select either ‘Turn off’ or ‘Turn off and delete activity’ (if you want to delete your past interactions with Gemini)
Microsoft Copilot
Microsoft says “We do not use customer data to train Copilot or any other LLM or AI”. You can still delete your Copilot activity history if you wish, although you can't opt out of future data collection so you'll need to repeat this process periodically. Here's how:
Scroll down to ‘Copilot activity history’
Select ‘Clear all Copilot activity history and search history’
Claude
Anthropic, the company behind AI chatbot Claude, states that it does not use customer data to train generative models.
Meta
Meta has paused its plans to use your Instagram and Facebook posts to train its AI in the EU and UK. Its Privacy Centre promises it will “let you know before we start using your information, and how you can exercise your right to object”.
X (formerly Twitter)
X recently changed its default settings to opt users in to allowing any content they post on X to be used to train XAi’s Grok. Here’s how you opt-out:
Untick the checkbox
Important note: It’s worth being aware that even once you’ve opted out of your content being used for model training, a human reviewer could still see it and/or it could be part of a data breach, so I'd still avoid inputting anything highly sensitive or confidential.