AI chatbots are everywhere, and people are leaning on them more than ever. You can use them to generate images, videos and even vibe-code apps and games. It's easy to get lost while playing around with them.
But not everyone is talking to chatbots in a lighthearted way. Some people are using them for therapy, as AI companions and to address their health concerns. Not only is that data being stored, but it can (and likely will) be used to train AI models further -- unless you do something about it.
By default, most AI chatbots and other AI tools have a setting that allows the company to use your data to train AI models, and all it does it take some tinkering in the settings to turn it off. And if you want to go even further, you can delete all of your previous conversations.
There are privacy concerns galore about AI generally, but since chatbots are the gateway to AI for most people, it's a glaring sore spot. In order to take back your data, you'll need to do one or two things, and that's opt out of having your data used for AI training purposes and delete the data that's there to be trained on for the future.
If your data has already been used to train an AI model, there's no undo option here, so being preemptive is your best bet.
Gemini #
You'll need to turn off a few settings in your Google account and in Gemini to prevent your data from being used to train AI models.
- Go to myactivity.google.com - Click Web & App Activity and turn it off.
Turning off Web & App Activity will prevent your new searches, location and other data from being recorded to your Google account and used for AI training. However, turning this off does not delete the existing activity already on your account. You'll still need to click the delete button on the same page and select to delete your data from either all time or your specified range.
Gemini
Gemini has its own settings that you'll need to disable in order to prevent Google from using your data for model training:
- Log in to Gemini
- Click the Settings cog - Click Activity - Click the drop-down and set it to Off.
Similarly, you'll also need to manually delete the existing Gemini activity (your conversations) by clicking the delete button and selecting a time range.
Claude #
If you're looking to remove your data or prevent Anthropic from using your data in Claude, it's a little more straightforward. Change Model Improvement settings:
- Log in to your Claude account
- Click your profile icon - Click Settings - Click Privacy - Set the toggle for Help improve our AI models to off.
While you're here, you might also want to toggle the Location metadata off for good measure. Deleting your conversations in Claude is also easy:
- Log in to your Claude account
- Click Chats on the left sidebar - Click Select Chats - Click Select all - Click Delete.
Per Anthropic's privacy policy, deleted chats are stored for up to 30 days in its back-end systems. If you've previously allowed Anthropic to use your data, and you turn the setting off, new and existing chats won't be used to train models going forward, but your data will be used in training that is in progress and won't be removed from models that have already been trained.
ChatGPT #
ChatGPT is the world's most-used chatbot. If you've been using it for a while without adjusting your settings, you've probably given OpenAI a lot of data.
Turn off model improvement in ChatGPT:
- Log in to your ChatGPT account
- Click your profile icon
- Click Settings - Click Data controls - Click improve the model for everyone - Switch the toggle to improve the model for everyone off.
This pop-up menu contains two additional settings to include your audio and video recordings, but toggling the main switch at the top will disable both of these settings.
To delete all of your chats, there's a dedicated button within the Data controls menu to do this. Like Anthropic's policy, OpenAI also stores deleted chats for up to 30 days.
(Disclosure: Ziff Davis, CNET's parent company, in 2025 filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.)
Meta #
The TL;DR for trying to get Meta to stop using your data to train its AI is that there's no guarantee. There's no elegant solution, and you'll have to submit a form, which Meta may take action on.
Making your profiles private and limiting your posts will shield you the most from AI training. Or you can just delete your Instagram and Facebook profiles.
Instagram users looking to get away from the fact that others can reuse their own media can opt out to avoid the deepfake apocalypse.
Aside from that, all else you can do is mute Meta AI. I was unable to find the specific setting to get Meta to stop using your data, and Meta did not respond to a request for comment when asked for a guaranteed way to opt-out of AI model training.
Grok
It's almost surprising that Grok will allow you to turn off AI model training on X, but you can. Here's how.
- Log in to your X account
- Click the More button - Click Settings and privacy - Click Privacy and safety - Click Grok & Third-Party Collaborators.
Uncheck the box next to "Allow your public data as well as your interactions, inputs, and results with Grok and XAI to be used for training and fine-tuning."
While you're at it, you might want to uncheck Allow X to personalize your experience with Grok and Allow Grok to remember your conversation history. You can also choose to delete your conversation history with Grok in this menu. There are plenty of other AI tools that you may need to do this for if you're a habitual user. We'll continue to add to them here over time. The settings may be a bit obscured and hard to find, but if the option is there, you'll typically find it in the data or privacy settings of the selected chatbot.