Review a chatbot's activity settings before you paste in real data

Find the activity setting

Google says that when its Keep Activity setting is on, your chats and what you share with Gemini, such as uploads, are saved in your activity and used to develop its services, including training generative AI models. When the setting is off, future chats do not appear in your activity and are not used to train its models unless you send feedback.

Even with the setting off, Google says chats are still kept for 72 hours so Gemini can respond, and temporary chats follow the same 72-hour retention. Activity is managed from the Gemini Apps Activity page in your Google account.

Understand human review

Google states that a subset of chats is reviewed by human reviewers to improve its services, that reviewed chats are disconnected from the account before going to service providers, and that reviewed chats are retained for up to three years. Deleting your activity does not delete chats that were already reviewed.

Its advice is direct: do not enter information that is confidential or that you would not want a reviewer to see. That applies to client data, passwords, health details and anything about other people.

Make a habit of checking

Settings pages are updated, and another assistant may work differently. Before using any assistant for work, read its current privacy page, decide which setting suits you, and set up a test with made-up data. For demonstrations, use invented examples rather than real names or records, which keeps both the audience and the people in the data safe.

• Read the provider's current privacy page.
• Decide whether activity saving should be on.
• Remember short-term retention can apply even when it is off.
• Keep confidential and personal data out of prompts.
• Use invented data in demonstrations.