Anamika Dey, editor
By TechSun News Desk | techsunnews.com | July 12, 2026 | Tech / AI / Privacy | 9 min read
Here is something most people never think about when they paste a work email, a health worry, or a half-finished business idea into ChatGPT: by default, that text can become training material for the next version of the AI.
Not shown to other users. Not sold, exactly. But fed into the machine that teaches the model — quietly, automatically — unless you have gone digging through a settings menu to say no.
We have written before about the downsides of ChatGPT nobody talks about. This is the practical follow-up. No lecture, no fear-mongering — just the exact switches to flip on the AI tools you already use, and about five minutes to do it.
One rule to understand first, because it shapes everything below: opting out only protects your future chats. Anything already swept into a finished training run cannot be pulled back out — OpenAI, Google and Microsoft all say as much in their own words. So the sooner you change these settings, the more of your data stays yours.
Here’s how the major AI assistants handle these settings.
ChatGPT (OpenAI)
If you are on a Free, Plus or Pro personal account, ChatGPT shares your conversations for training by default — that is straight from OpenAI’s own help pages. The fix takes about thirty seconds.
Open ChatGPT, click your profile, then go to Settings, then Data Controls, and switch off “Improve the model for everyone.” That is the toggle. Once it is off, OpenAI says new conversations will not be used to train its models. (OpenAI’s help page walks through it.)
Two things people miss. First, if you tap the thumbs-up or thumbs-down on a reply, you hand OpenAI that specific conversation for training anyway, even with the setting off. Second, for anything genuinely sensitive, use a Temporary Chat, the option in the model menu. Those are not used for training and do not show up in your history, though OpenAI still holds them for around 30 days.
One bit of good news: Business, Enterprise, Edu and API accounts are already excluded from training by default, so this is really a consumer-account problem.
Google Gemini
Gemini’s data lives inside your Google account, which makes it a little more tangled. By default, Google saves your Gemini conversations and, per its support docs, a sample gets read by human reviewers and used to improve its models.
To shut that off, open Gemini on the web or in the app, go to your profile, and find Gemini Apps Activity (Google is renaming it “Keep Activity”). Turn it off — or choose “Turn off and delete activity” to wipe what is already there. You can also go straight to myactivity.google.com/product/gemini.
Now the fine print Google is upfront about: even with activity off, your chats are held for up to 72 hours to run the service, and anything already pulled into human review can sit for up to three years, detached from your account and impossible for you to delete. If you use Gemini Live, there is a separate box — “Improve Google services with your audio and Gemini Live recordings” — worth unchecking too. And if you have let Gemini into Gmail and Docs through Google’s “smart features,” those are their own separate switches; turning off Apps Activity does not touch them.
Microsoft Copilot
This one surprises people. According to Microsoft’s own privacy FAQ, consumer Copilot uses your conversation activity — including voice, and the images and files you upload — to train its models, unless you opt out.
On copilot.com, Windows or Mac, click your profile, then head to the Privacy section and turn off “Training on conversation activity” (and “Training on voice conversations” if you talk to it). On mobile it is Menu, then profile, then Account, then Privacy. Microsoft notes you can switch training off and still keep personalization on if you like the memory feature. Your history sticks around for 18 months by default unless you delete it. (Microsoft’s privacy controls page has the exact paths.)
A separate trap for developers: GitHub Copilot, the coding assistant, started using Free, Pro and Pro+ interaction data for training by default on April 24, 2026 — that is your code, comments and file names included. If that is you, go to github.com/settings/copilot, find the Privacy section, and set “Allow GitHub to use my data for AI model training” to Disabled.
Apple Intelligence
Here is the outlier, and the one to hold the others up against. Apple built its system to do as much as possible on your device, and for anything it cannot, it uses something called Private Cloud Compute. Apple’s own privacy documentation says the data sent there is not stored, is not accessible even to Apple, and is not used to train its models. In other words, with Apple Intelligence you are largely opted out by design.
There is still a little housekeeping. To see exactly what is leaving your device, go to Settings, then Privacy & Security, then Apple Intelligence Report. And if you would rather Apple did not use anonymized, aggregate data about your AI usage, turn off Settings, then Privacy & Security, then Analytics & Improvements, then Share iPhone Analytics. One more thing to know: when Siri hands a question to ChatGPT, you step outside Apple’s bubble and into OpenAI’s, so treat those hand-offs like using ChatGPT directly.
What about Claude and Grok?
The same logic covers the other two from our big four-way AI comparison: both Anthropic’s Claude and Elon Musk’s Grok keep their training controls in account settings, and the routine is identical — find the data or privacy section, opt out, and delete what you do not want kept. The lesson generalizes. Assume any consumer AI is set to learn from you until you tell it otherwise.
The part no toggle fixes
Flipping these switches does real good, but be honest about the limits. None of it is retroactive. Deletion is not instant either — most of these companies hold your data for a window (30 days at OpenAI, 72 hours and up at Google, 18 months of history at Microsoft) even after you hit delete. And the memory features that make these tools feel personal are a separate data trail worth clearing now and then. When in doubt, the oldest privacy rule still wins: if you would be uncomfortable seeing it on a billboard, do not type it into a chatbot.
The key takeaways
Five minutes, four or five settings, and you have stopped the biggest AI tools from quietly learning from your private life. It is the rare privacy win that is genuinely quick.
For the layer these settings do not touch — hiding your browsing and location from your internet provider and the sites you visit — a VPN does the job, and we tested and ranked the best ones in our 2026 VPN guide. Between the two, you have covered both what you type and where you go.
All settings and policies above reflect what OpenAI, Google, Microsoft and Apple have published as of July 2026. These menus get renamed and reshuffled often — Google is mid-way through renaming one of them as we publish — so if a label does not match, look for the nearest “Data,” “Privacy” or “Activity” section.
Over to you
Be honest — had you ever checked these settings before today?
A) Nope — everything was still on by default
B) I’d changed one or two, but not all of them
C) Already locked down — I do this on every app
Frequently Asked Questions
Does turning off training delete my old chats? No. Opting out only stops your future conversations from being used to train the AI. Anything already used in a finished training run cannot be removed, and your past chats stay in your history until you delete them separately.
Which AI assistant is best for privacy by default? Among the mainstream options, Apple Intelligence is the most private out of the box — Apple says data sent to its Private Cloud Compute is not stored or used to train its models. Most chatbots, by contrast, train on consumer conversations unless you opt out.
If I opt out, will the AI still work normally? Yes. On every platform here, turning off training does not change the quality of the answers you get. The only thing you may lose is personalization that relies on the tool remembering your past chats.
Editor’s Observation
I flipped every one of these switches while writing this, and the whole thing took under ten minutes across two chatbots, my laptop and my phone. What stuck with me was not the effort — it was realizing how many were quietly set to “on,” and how little any app had gone out of its way to tell me. Privacy here is not hard. It is just hidden. Spend the ten minutes. — Anamika Dey, Editor
