While millions of users fire up ChatGPT daily to help with everything from homework to coding problems, few stop to reflect on what happens to all that personal information they’re typing into the chat box. OpenAI’s chatbot is quite the collector—prompts, chat logs, names, emails, payment details, even your resume if you upload it. Nothing gets past its digital eye.

Every time you ask ChatGPT about your weird rash or that oddly specific fantasy novel plot, that data goes somewhere. Specifically, it’s used to train newer, smarter AI models like GPT-4o and the upcoming GPT-5. Your confusion about calculus today becomes tomorrow’s teaching algorithm. Neat, right? Or creepy. Depends on your perspective.

The company stores your conversations on servers, mostly in the U.S. They say they keep data “only as long as needed.” Whatever that means. If you disable chat history, your conversations stick around for 30 days for “abuse monitoring” before disappearing into the digital void. Delete your account and your data allegedly vanishes within two weeks.

Don’t want to be part of OpenAI’s grand experiment? You can opt out. There’s a toggle in settings called “Improve the model for everyone.” Yeah, they’re guilt-tripping you a little with that name. Turn it off and your new chats won’t feed the AI beast. Or use “Temporary Chat” for conversations that self-destruct after a month.

At least OpenAI claims they’re not selling your data to marketers. Small comfort. They still share information with “trusted service providers” and “for legitimate business purposes.” Translation: lots of people you don’t know might see your stuff. Human trainers at OpenAI may also review your conversations for model improvement purposes.

Security measures exist—encryption, bug bounties. But breaches happen. Remember March 2023? User data leaked. Oops. OpenAI has since implemented SOC 2 compliance to confirm they’re meeting industry security standards.

Bottom line: ChatGPT knows you. Probably better than some of your friends do. It’s watching, learning, remembering. Unless you tell it not to.