The Five Things You Should Never Share with ChatGPT

Heads-up: AI chatbots like ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot, and Claude aren't your personal confidants. Anything you type into them becomes a semi-public paper trail.

Tech companies store your prompts to train future models, meaning your sensitive data lives on their servers, and that goes for every major AI platform on the market, not just one.

A smartphone is showing an ai assistant's interface

So, according to privacy experts, here are five things you should never share with an A.I. bot:

1. Personally identifiable information. Don't use your name, address, phone number or Social Security number.

2. Intimate personal details. You shouldn't be sharing sensitive information about your relationships, mental health, or private life.

3. Medical information. Don't share your health records, diagnoses, and any other personal healthcare details.

4. Confidential work information. Don't use any client data, source code, trade secrets, or anything covered by an NDA.

5. Financial information. You should also not share any of your bank accounts, investment records, credit card numbers, tax documents, and pay stubs.

a group of white robots sitting on top of laptops

If you have already entered private data, wipe your chat history immediately and adjust your account privacy controls. Moving forward, anonymize your inputs by using broad, non-specific details instead of real names or confidential figures.

A good rule of thumb: treat AI chatbots like a public work chat... if you wouldn't share it with the whole company, don't paste it into a prompt.