We did a close read of the privacy policies of three leading AI companies, OpenAI, Anthropic, and Perplexity (each hyperlink goes to the company’s privacy policy so you can read it yourself, or ironically, ask AI to summarize it).
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Data collection
All three AI companies largely collect the same data. In addition to account identifiers (name, email, login credentials), the companies collect all user content—everything that’s inputted by a user into their chatbot (prompts, responses, etc.), as well as what the chatbot outputs in its responses. This includes written content, images, and other files. They also collect technical data (IP addresses, device and browser information, cookies, log files, etc.).
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Data use
It should come as no surprise that AI companies are collecting the data we make available to their chatbots. What is surprising is how that data is used, and how the content from seemingly private conversations can find its way back into LLMs. All three AI companies report using the data they collect to maintain their products, improve them over time, ensure security, prevent abuse, and comply with legal obligations.