What Kinds of Data do AI Chatbots Collect?
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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 of text". I guess on Lemmy the situation is better. It is just my bad habit.
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!
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Does that include generated responses?
Did a personal data export for chatGPT and it included the complete conversation, not just my input.
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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).
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
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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.
Fully agree, which is also why I choose EU/Swiss made services by default
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I have a bridge to sell you if you think grok is collecting the least amount of info.
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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It's labeled "Unique data points". See the number 2 - Usage Data for Gemini, there's an arrow with label there.
Thank you I totally missed that.
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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
Almost none of this data is possible to collect when using Tor Browser
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Note this is if you use their apps. Not the api. Not through another app.
Not that we have any real info about who collects/uses what when you use the API
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If by more learning you mean learning
ollama run deepseek-r1:7bThen 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.
Or if using flatpak, its an add-on for Alpaca. One click install, GUI management.
Windows users? By the time you understand how to locally install AI, you're probably knowledgeable enough to migrate to linux. What the heck is the point of using local AI for privacy while running windows?
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If you want to start playing around immediately, try Alpaca if Linux, LMStudio if Windows. See if it works for you, then move from there.
Ollama recently became a flatpak extension for Alpaca but it's a one-click install from the Alpaca software management entry. All storage locations are the same so no need to re-DL any open models or remake tweaked models from the previous setup.
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Only if my hardware could support it..
It's possible to run local AI on a Raspberry Pi, it's all just a matter of speed and complexity. I run Ollama just fine on the two P-cores of my older i3 laptop. Granted, running it on the CUDA-accelerator (GFX card) on my main rig is beyond faster.
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Not that we have any real info about who collects/uses what when you use the API
Yeah we do, they list it in privacy policies. Many of these they can't really collect even if they wanted to
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Who TF using Grok.
Most of my workforce strangely enough. They claim it’s the best for them in terms of mathematics, but I can’t find that to be a good reason.
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Most of my workforce strangely enough. They claim it’s the best for them in terms of mathematics, but I can’t find that to be a good reason.
Isn't deepseek better for that?
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Isn't deepseek better for that?
That’s what I’m saying!
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And I can't possibly imagine that Grok actually collects less than ChatGPT.
Also DeepSeek is pretty low on the list despite all the "seeseepee spyware" fear mongering. Also you can run their models locally which doesn't send any data to them at all.
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Data from surfshark aka nordvpn lol. Take it with a few chunks of salt
Yeah I feel like there's a supposedly missing somewhere. We don't know their servers so at the very least 'user content' is based on trust.
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Almost none of this data is possible to collect when using Tor Browser
Nope, these services almost always require user login, eventually tied to cell number (ie non disposable) and associate user content and other data points with account. Nonetheless user prompts are always collected. How they're used is a good question.
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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
anyone whos competent in the matter: what about the french competition chat.mistral.ai
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Fully agree, which is also why I choose EU/Swiss made services by default
not sure about swiss, they shady as hell if you have scepticism towards rich people greed
