Does paying for Gemini keep your chats out of model training?

Paying for a personal Google AI subscription does not keep your Gemini chats out of model training, according to a user post on Hacker News that cites Google's own support pages. The only way to opt out, the post says, is to turn off chat history or rely on temporary chat sessions.

The author says Google's help documentation states that saved Gemini app activity "is used to improve Google services for everyone, including by training generative AI models, if your Keep Activity setting is on." The same pages say that "a subset of chats are reviewed by human reviewers."

What the help pages say about review and retention

Does deleting chat history remove conversations already reviewed?

The retention language is the part that stands out. According to the quoted text, chats reviewed by humans "are not deleted when you delete your activity. Instead, they are retained for up to three years." So clearing your history does not remove a conversation that has already been picked up for review.

Google also warns users against sharing sensitive material. The post quotes the help page advising users not to "enter confidential information that you wouldn't want a reviewer to see or Google to use to improve our services, including machine-learning technologies." The poster notes that although Google says reviewed chats are disconnected from the user's account, the company explicitly tells people not to enter confidential information.

The cost of opting out

How do you opt out of Gemini training, and what does it cost?

Turning off training requires disabling the Keep Activity setting in Gemini's settings menu. The post says that move has a trade-off: chat sessions are lost after 72 hours.

The author, who says they only recently learned about the policy, wrote that they assumed a paid plan meant they would not be treated as the product. "Apparently paying is not enough," the post reads. The author credited another Hacker News user in a separate thread for flagging the issue.

The post is a user's reading of Google's documentation, not a company statement, and the policies it quotes could change. Still, the excerpts point to a gap that many paying customers may not expect, particularly for anyone who has shared work-related or personal information in Gemini conversations.

Este artículo fue escrito con la asistencia de IA.
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