Real people at AI companies may be reading your private chats — here's how to protect yourself

You might tell ChatGPT things you’d never share with a stranger. Maybe you’ve asked it about a medical concern, argued with your spouse in a conversation about relationship advice or uploaded a document containing financial information. But before your next conversation, here's something to know: Real people at AI companies may be able to read some of what you share. OpenAI, Google, Microsoft and Anthropic all have policies that allow certain conversations to be reviewed by humans, whether to improve their AI systems, investigate potential safety violations or troubleshoot problems. That doesn’t mean someone is sitting behind a screen reading every message you send, but the assumption that your AI conversations are strictly between you and the chatbot is not accurate.