this post was submitted on 15 Apr 2025
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What Kinds of Data do AI Chatbots Collect? (lemmy.ml)
submitted 20 hours ago* (last edited 20 hours ago) by will_a113@lemmy.ml to c/privacy@lemmy.ml
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A chart titled "What Kind of Data Do AI Chatbots Collect?" lists and compares seven AI chatbots—Gemini, Claude, CoPilot, Deepseek, ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Grok—based on the types and number of data points they collect as of February 2025. The categories of data include: Contact Info, Location, Contacts, User Content, History, Identifiers, Diagnostics, Usage Data, Purchases, Other Data.

  • Gemini: Collects all 10 data types; highest total at 22 data points
  • Claude: Collects 7 types; 13 data points
  • CoPilot: Collects 7 types; 12 data points
  • Deepseek: Collects 6 types; 11 data points
  • ChatGPT: Collects 6 types; 10 data points
  • Perplexity: Collects 6 types; 10 data points
  • Grok: Collects 4 types; 7 data points
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[–] jagged_circle@feddit.nl 2 points 2 hours ago

Almost none of this data is possible to collect when using Tor Browser

[–] sonalder@lemmy.ml 6 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 49 minutes ago)

Anyone has these data from Mistral, HuggingChat and MetaAI ? Would be nice to add them too

Edit : Leo from brave would be great to compare too

[–] morrowind@lemmy.ml 10 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

Note this is if you use their apps. Not the api. Not through another app.

[–] will_a113@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 hour ago

Not that we have any real info about who collects/uses what when you use the API

[–] scintilla@lemm.ee 4 points 7 hours ago (2 children)

Am I missing something? What do the numbers mean in relation to the type? Sub types?

[–] caoimhinr@lemmy.world 1 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

It's labeled "Unique data points". See the number 2 - Usage Data for Gemini, there's an arrow with label there.

[–] scintilla@lemm.ee 1 points 2 hours ago

Thank you I totally missed that.

[–] ohwhatfollyisman@lemmy.world 1 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

perhaps it's the limit imof each data type?!

gemini harvests only your first four cobtacts, your last two locations, and so on.

how does one defeat that? have fewer than four friends and don't go out!

[–] RandomVideos@programming.dev 1 points 5 hours ago

Ask people for their phone number to add to your contacts and give them your phone for a day

[–] demunted@lemmy.ml 14 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

Who TF using Grok.

[–] MoonRaven@feddit.nl 4 points 6 hours ago

Fascists. Why?

[–] knighthawk0811@lemmy.ml 17 points 13 hours ago

I'm interested in seeing how this changes when using duck duck go front end at duck.ai

there's no login and history is stored locally (probably remotely too)

[–] HiddenLayer555@lemmy.ml 40 points 17 hours ago (5 children)

DeepSeek at home: None

[–] tonyn@lemmy.ml 5 points 12 hours ago

How much VRAM does your machine have? Are you using open webui?

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[–] Cris16228@lemmy.today 91 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

Me when Gemini (aka google) collects more data than anyone else:

Not really shocked, we all know that google sucks

[–] Telorand@reddthat.com 26 points 18 hours ago (2 children)

I would hazard a guess that the only reason those others aren't as high is because they don't have the same access to data. It's not that they don't want to, they simply can't (yet).

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[–] pennomi@lemmy.world 116 points 19 hours ago (2 children)

Locally run AI: 0

[–] exothermic@lemmy.world 15 points 16 hours ago (6 children)

Are there tutorials on how to do this? Should it be set up on a server on my local network??? How hard is it to set up? I have so many questions.

[–] Kiuyn@lemmy.ml 14 points 16 hours ago* (last edited 16 hours ago) (1 children)

I recommend GPT4all if you want run locally on your PC. It is super easy.

If you want to run in a separate server. Ollama + some kind of web UI is the best.

Ollama can also be run locally but IMO it take more learning than GUI app like GPT4all.

[–] codexarcanum@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

If by more learning you mean learning

ollama run deepseek-r1:7b

Then yeah, it's a pretty steep curve!

If you're a developer then you can also search "$MyFavDevEnv use local ai ollama" to find guides on setting up. I'm using Continue extension for VS Codium (or Code) but there's easy to use modules for Vim and Emacs and probably everything else as well.

The main problem is leveling your expectations. The full Deepseek is a 671b (that's billions of parameters) and the model weights (the thing you download when you pull an AI) are 404GB in size. You need so much RAM available to run one of those.

They make distilled models though, which are much smaller but still useful. The 14b is 9GB and runs fine with only 16GB of ram. They obviously aren't as impressive as the cloud hosted big versions though.

[–] Kiuyn@lemmy.ml 5 points 10 hours ago* (last edited 10 hours ago) (2 children)

My assumption is always the person I am talking to is a normal window user who don't know what a terminal is. Most of them even freak out when they see "the black box with text on it". I guess on Lemmy the situation is better. It is just my bad habit.

[–] utopiah@lemmy.ml 2 points 4 hours ago

normal window user who don’t know what a terminal is. Most of them even freak out when they see “the black box with text on it”.

Good point! That being said I'm wondering how we could help anybody, genuinely being inclusive, on how to transform that feeling of dread, basically "Oh, that's NOT for me!", to "Hmmm that's the challenging part but it seems worth it and potentially feasible, I should try". I believe it's important because in turn the "normal window user" could potentially understand limitations hidden to them until now. They would not instantly better understand how their computer work but the initial reaction would be different, namely considering a path of learning.

Any idea or good resources on that? How can we both demystify the terminal with a pleasant onboarding? How about a Web based tutorial that asks user to try side by side to manipulate files? They'd have their own desktop with their file manager on one side (if they want to) and the browser window with e.g. https://copy.sh/v86/ (WASM) this way they will lose no data no matter what.

Maybe such examples could be renaming files with ImagesHoliday_WrongName.123.jpg to ImagesHoliday_RightName.123.jpg then doing that for 10 files, then 100 files, thus showing that it does scale and enables ones to do things practically impossible without the terminal.

Another example could be combining commands, e.g. ls to see files then wc -l to count how many files are in directory. That would not be very exciting so then maybe generating an HTML file with the list of files and the file count.

Honestly I believe finding the right examples that genuinely showcases the power of the terminal, the agency it brings, is key!

[–] codexarcanum@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 10 hours ago

No worries! You're probably right that it's better not to assume, and it's good of you to provide some different options.

[–] pennomi@lemmy.world 10 points 16 hours ago

Check out Ollama, it’s probably the easiest way to get started these days. It provides tooling and an api that different chat frontends can connect to.

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[–] TuxEnthusiast@sopuli.xyz 11 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago) (1 children)

If only my hardware could support it..

[–] skarn@discuss.tchncs.de 5 points 15 hours ago

I can actually use locally some smaller models on my 2017 laptop (though I have increased the RAM to 16 GB).

You'd be surprised how mich can be done with how little.

[–] zr0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 24 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

And what about goddamn Mistral?

[–] Sunny@slrpnk.net 7 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

Its French as far as I know so at least it abides to gdpr by default.

[–] zr0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 11 hours ago (2 children)

All services you see above are provided to EU citizens, which is why they also have to abide by GDPR. GDPR does not disallow the gathering of information. Google, for example, is GDPR compliant, yet they are number 1 on that list. That’s why I would like to know if European companies still try to have a business case with personal data or not.

[–] Sunny@slrpnk.net 4 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago) (1 children)

If it's one thing I don't trust its non-EU companies following GDPR. Sure they're legally bound to, but l mean Meta doesn't care so why should the rest.

(Yes I'm being overly dramatic about this, but I've lost trust ages ago in big tech companies)

[–] zr0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 4 hours ago

Fully agree, which is also why I choose EU/Swiss made services by default

[–] Susurrus@lemm.ee 1 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

It doesn't mean they "have to abide by GDPR" or that they "are GDPR compliant". All it means is they appear to be GDPR compliant and pretend to respect user privacy. The sole fact that the AI chatbots are run in US-based data centres is against GDPR. The EU has had many different personal data transfer agreements with the US, all of which were canceled shortly after signing due to US corporations breaking them repeatedly (Facebook usually being the main culprit).

[–] zr0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 4 hours ago

I tried to say that, but you were better at explaining, so thank you. Without a court case, you will essentially never know, if they are truly GDPR compliant

[–] WreckingBANG@lemmy.ml 51 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

Who would have guessed that the advertising company collects a lot of data

[–] will_a113@lemmy.ml 25 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

And I can't possibly imagine that Grok actually collects less than ChatGPT.

[–] Chronographs@lemmy.zip 26 points 19 hours ago

Data from surfshark aka nordvpn lol. Take it with a few chunks of salt

[–] kirk781@discuss.tchncs.de 25 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago)

Back in the day, malware makers could only dream of collecting as much data as Gemini does.

[–] abdominable@lemm.ee 20 points 19 hours ago (2 children)

I have a bridge to sell you if you think grok is collecting the least amount of info.

[–] anindefinitearticle@sh.itjust.works 2 points 2 hours ago

Grok's business model isn't collecting your data.

It's feeding you propaganda.

They are more interested in the other direction of data flow.

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[–] altphoto@lemmy.today 5 points 16 hours ago (2 children)

Is there away to fake all the data they try to collect?

[–] subatomic4771@sh.itjust.works 4 points 8 hours ago

I just came across this article which for people who are into self hosting can take a look and participate. It's basically a tool that generating never ending web pages with non sense that load slow (but not too slow the AI tools move on) to slow down and thus cost them more to scrape the internet if enough people are doing it. You can also hide it in a way that legit user would never see this on your site:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/01/ai-haters-build-tarpits-to-trap-and-trick-ai-scrapers-that-ignore-robots-txt/ https://zadzmo.org/code/nepenthes/

[–] unexposedhazard@discuss.tchncs.de 3 points 16 hours ago* (last edited 16 hours ago) (2 children)

Pretty sure this is what they scrape from your device if you install their app. I dont know how else they would get access to contacts and location and stuff. So yeah you can just run it on a virtual android device and feed it garbage data, but i assume the app or their backend will detect that and throw out your data.

[–] marauding_gibberish142@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 15 hours ago

How about if I only use the web version?

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[–] OprahsedCreature@lemmy.ml 9 points 18 hours ago

Or you could use Deepseek's workaround and run it locally. You know, open source and all.

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