Even Paid Gemini Subscribers' Chats Can Be Used to Train AI Models. Here's the Setting to Turn Off
Google says that when "Keep Activity" is on in a personal account, your conversations may be used to train its models. What matters is that setting, not whether you pay for a subscription.
A post that went up on Hacker News on November 4 (local time) pointed out that if you use Gemini with a personal account, your conversations can be used for AI training even if you are a paying subscriber. According to Google’s privacy documentation, when “Keep Activity” is turned on in a personal account, your conversations and the content you upload along with them may be used to improve Google’s services, including training its models.
Google’s documentation describes no blanket exception that excludes paying subscribers’ conversations from training. For users on personal accounts, the question to check is not whether you pay, but whether you have left Keep Activity switched on.
How to stop your chats from being used for training
Google says that once Keep Activity is turned off, conversations from that point on are, as a rule, not used to train its models. The exception is feedback you submit yourself. Even after you turn the setting off, anything you send in as feedback is governed by different terms.
Turning off activity storage does not make your conversations disappear right away. Google explains that it retains conversations for up to 72 hours to operate the service and keep it safe. Turning off the setting also means some connected apps will no longer work. It is worth checking in advance whether the connected features you normally rely on will keep working.
When stored records are deleted depends on the type of data. Activity records are deleted automatically after 18 months by default. Material that has already been reviewed by a human, on the other hand, may be kept for up to three years even after you delete your activity, according to Google.
How ChatGPT differs
ChatGPT has a comparable setting that allows personal conversations to be used to improve its models. OpenAI says the setting is on by default for personal Free, Plus, and Pro accounts. On that point the two services are the same: even on a paid personal account, you need to check your data settings yourself.
Source: Google (press release)
Where they differ is in how chat history is handled. OpenAI explains that you can continue to keep your chat history even with model-improvement sharing turned off. With Gemini, turning off Keep Activity is the way to prevent later conversations from being used for training. If you like to go back and look up past conversations, it is worth comparing how the two services structure these settings.
Google’s list of supported locations and languages for Gemini includes both South Korea and Korean. Users on personal accounts in Korea should review the terms around activity history and feedback, and also look at how changing the setting will affect the connected apps they use.