There’s no doubt about it, ChatGPT is a useful AI tool, whether you’re looking to create a snappy poem for someone’s birthday card, or totally reinvent your workout routine with an AI-curated plan. However, it’s also a hungry beast, and will merrily gobble up any data you feed it.
The reason that ChatGPT (and all AI chatbots) crave data is that it is being used to train the platform to provide better answers in the future. While it’s good that this will lead to a continual improvement of the system, you might feel slightly squeamish about your information being used in this way.
Here’s how you can tell ChatGPT not to train on your data, as well as some ways to use the tool anonomously.
How to Stop ChatGPT Training With Your Data
The fact that OpenAI, owners of ChatGPT, are collecting your data and using it to train their AI, isn’t a secret. You’ll find they’re very open about it in the site FAQs, and in fact, you should expect this to be the case for any AI chatbot you use.
Stop us if you’ve heard this before, but if a service is free, more often than not it’s YOU that is the product. By using ChatGPT you are essentially agreeing to let the company use your information to improve the service.
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However, what you may not realise is that it is possible to turn off data collection in the settings, so let’s go ahead and do that now.
Temporarily disable ChatGPT training on your data
Firstly, lets look at how to temporary disable data collection for training. If you’re generally fine with your data being used, but want to put in a prompt that you’d really rather not be collected (we’re not here to judge you), you can turn off data retention for that session.
Go to the ChatGPT drop down menu at the top of the screen, and select ‘Temporary Chat’.
That’s it. You’re now free to use ChatGPT, without your data being used to train its system. However, as the pop up notice points out, ChatGPT may still save your chat history for thirty days:
Permanently disable ChatGPT training on your data
If you’re looking for a more long term solution, then you need to take a deeper diver into the options.
First, you’ll need to log into your account. Then, go to the settings menu, which is located in the top right of the screen, by clicking on your account icon:
While we’re taking a look at the settings here, it’s worth noting that if you want to, you can delete your entire chat history from here. Chances are that this data will have already been used to train ChatGPT’s models, but it’s worth knowing it’s there for future reference:
Now, in the settings menu, you’ll want to head to the Data Controls section.
From here, there’s a button at the top of the options marked ‘Improve the model for everyone’, which by default is set to on. This is the magic button you’ll need to click if you’re adamant about turning off data training permanently.
That’s it, you’re done!
While we’re in this menu, there’s a couple of other interesting options that it’s worth taking a look at. Firstly, this is where you can delete your account from, if you ever want to go scorched earth and remove yourself from ChatGPT entirely.
There is also an export data option here, which you can use to extract a report of all your data from the system.
How to Use ChatGPT Anonymously
If you’re concerned about your data being collected by ChatGPT, it is actually possible to use the service anonymously.
In April of this year, OpenAI announced that it was rolling out the ability to use ChatGPT without needing to sign in. It’s worth noting that accessibility depends on your country, but US users shouldn’t have any issues using the service without having to create an account.
Doing this won’t protect you from having your data used for training purposes, but it does mean that any chats you have won’t be linked to your account.
There’s also another way to use ChatGPT without signing in, and that’s thanks to the DuckDuckGo browser. Unlike simply not signing in to ChatGPT as above, using this method means that your data won’t be used for training purposes, and not only that, but you’re also given the option of selecting which AI chatbot you’d like to use.
Whatever you decide to do, there are some things we’d suggest never sharing with ChatGPT, including financial data, creative data, and personal information.
