Privacy
Are AI chats private?
Mostly not. With the mainstream assistants your conversations are stored against an account, readable by the company, discoverable in litigation, and — unless you changed a setting — used to improve their models.
What "private" is doing in their sentences
Most privacy language in this category describes transport and access control: the connection is encrypted, staff access is limited, data is held securely. All true, and none of it addresses whether the conversation continues to exist afterwards.
The question that matters is not who is prevented from reading it today. It is whether there is anything to read at all next year, when the policy, the owner, or the legal situation has changed.
Three questions that settle it
Is there an account? If yes, everything is attached to an identity, and the rest is detail.
Does the conversation survive the session? "Deleted after 30 days" means it exists for 30 days, during which it can be requested, breached or preserved by order.
What does the provider behind the product retain? Most chat products are a layer over someone else’s model. If that provider keeps prompts, the front end’s promise cannot be kept — which is why nokeep runs every engine under a no-retention agreement and re-checks that tier daily rather than trusting it.
Asked before you asked
Can employees read my AI conversations?
At most major providers, staff can access conversations under defined circumstances such as abuse investigation and safety review. Access is controlled and logged; it is not impossible.
Are temporary or incognito chat modes private?
They usually mean the conversation is excluded from your visible history and from training. The message still reaches the server, and short-term retention for abuse monitoring is common.
What is the most private option that still works well?
A local model, if you have the hardware. Otherwise a hosted chat with no account and a genuine no-retention agreement, which is the strongest arrangement available without running the model yourself.