Google's Gemini trains on your chats even if you pay for a subscription
Tell HN: Gemini trains on chat history, even for subscribers (personal accounts)
A Hacker News user warns that personal Google AI subscribers' saved Gemini chats are used to train generative models and can be read by human reviewers—with no opt-out except disabling "Keep activity," which deletes chats after 72 hours. Google's own support pages confirm the training and human review, noting reviewed chats are retained for up to three years even after deletion. The user assumed paying meant not being turned into the product.
I learned this too late, thinking that having a paid subscription = not being turned into the product. Apparently paying is not enough.
- fny
"These chat transcripts may even be read by human reviewers."
PSA: This is true of all the frontier model providers even if you disable activity tracking. They are all constantly monitoring your interactions for problematic behavior.
[0]: https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/advice/ai-chat-privacy/
[1]: https://www.404media.co/inside-project-lily-the-humans-readi...
[2]: https://www.winknews.com/news/woman-arrested-after-ai-threat...
- richrichardsson
What's worse is if you have a Pixel phone then Gemini is completely useless without enabling this setting.
I had it switched off:
"Hey Google, remind me at 7pm <something>"
"OK, your reminder is set for 7pm"
Next day:
"Hey Google, why didn't you remind me at 7pm"
"I can't do anything with your phone unless you enable chat history."
WTAF!
- therealmarv
They should offer history + not training (every other big AI company is offering that).
And while there at it they should also allow to buy Youtube Premium Full normally when you've got Google AI Pro yearly which includes Youtube Premium Lite. The add+on price is like over 100% the price than buying Youtube Premium Full in my country and no way to buy normally :(
- devsda
> Please don’t enter confidential information that you wouldn’t want a reviewer to see or Google
If Gemini has access to app data like gallery, mail etc that can also be subjected to human review? I imagine that will also be part of the context.
They are vague when they say 'don't enter'. Is it only prompts or does it also cover other data too.
- bethekidyouwant
You guys must be joking if you don’t want the AI to get better stop using it. NIMBY for your precious chat logs.
- viraptor
I don't trust any of the providers, but at the same time I think you're reading into the terms too much for wrong reasons. Yes, you have to opt out. But:
> A subset of chats are reviewed by human reviewers
This is expected these days for threads which may make the provider liable. Just look at the recent death case due to bad GPT medication recommendation.
> Chats reviewed by human reviewers [...] are not deleted when you delete your activity. Instead, they are retained for up to three years.
They're being retained for legal purposes.
> Please don’t enter confidential information...
This is so they don't accidentally preserve it for review, but also they don't want you to share private info that the agent will post somewhere without an explicit approval.
Those points make sense for them, regardless what other T&C rules apply.
- giwook
Is this really surprising to anyone?
I just sorta assumed that Google was hoovering up anything I type into its AI and don't tell it anything too personal or sensitive.
Is anyone under the illusion that our data is not being collected, whether it's Google or literally even the seemingly innocuous TVs in our home that have been found to be spying on us 24/7?
- 233mhz
imho you should act as if everything you type, not even send, is stored forever and might be used for training whenever they decide to retro actively change their TOS, no matter how much money you pay