You should not share this information with the AI

Google has to work really hard if it wants to keep up with its competitor ChatGPT. That is why the Bard company has now also started in Germany and the European Union. “Bard is now available in most countries around the world, including all European Union states and Brazil,” said Google executive Jack Krawczyk.

In order to train and improve its AI, Google collects personal and confidential information from users. Google Bard users are also aware of this. In the worst case, however, it can happen that the chatbot stores confidential data and third parties can access it. By the way, this can also happen if you have deactivated the saving of conversations.

Because Google is always striving to develop and improve its chatbot, data may still flow to Google, for example about “Web & App Activity” or your Google Account location history when you use Bard. Therefore, by default, all conversations with the chatbot are saved for possible use for training purposes.

Although Google says that the data is automatically anonymized, the information can be kept for up to 3 years independently of the user’s Google account. So that Google can now officially collect and analyze data to train its AI models, the company has even updated its data protection guidelines.

Google states that it uses this information to improve its services and to develop new AI-driven products.

In the new Google Privacy Policy It says: “Google uses information to improve our services and develop new products, features and technologies that benefit our users and the public. For example, we use publicly available information to train Google’s AI models and develop products and features such as Google Translate, Bard, and cloud AI capabilities.”

Before updating the policy, Google used users’ data to improve “speech” models. Now, Google reserves the right to use user data to improve all of its AI models and products.

If you are now wondering on what legal basis Google uses the Bard Data under European Union (EU) or United Kingdom (UK) data protection law, you are not alone. Typically, privacy policies limit companies to collecting data that users directly provide. However, the new policy allows the company to use any information that people post publicly online.

writes about it Google: “If European Union or UK data protection law applies to the processing of your data, please read the following information carefully.” legal basis, which are described below.”

As described below, we then state, among other things: “We process information from publicly available sources and your Bard Data in order to develop, provide, manage and improve Google products and services and machine learning technologies.”

If you’re worried about your information falling into the wrong hands, there are some steps you can take to prevent that from happening. Only post public information that you’re really comfortable with, even if you know it can be accessed and used by anyone, including Google.

Go to your Google account and check your privacy settings. You can opt out of options like “Web & App Activity,” “Location History,” and “Voice & Audio Activity.” Instead of using Google services like Search, Gmail, YouTube, Chrome, etc., you can switch to alternative providers with stricter privacy policies.

Options include DuckDuckGo for searching, ProtonMail for email, Vimeo for video sharing, and Brave for web browsing. Also, turn on incognito or private browsing mode when using Google services.

In the case of Bard, you can be even more specific. Go to the website https://myactivity.google.com/product/bard. Click on “Bard Activities”, slide the slider to “Off”. Now your future conversations will no longer be saved, nor will they be viewable by human reviewers.

If you also want to delete your previous conversations, click Delete at the bottom of the page. Select the period of time to delete the conversations and confirm the process.