AI Exposure · AI chatbot
What Google Gemini actually does with your data
Google's chatbot, one tap away on Android phones, in Chrome and in search. On a personal account, the training switch is on until someone finds it.
- Trains on your data
- Depends on the account
- Processed
- Google LLC for UK users
- Can you turn it off
- Not for personal accounts
- Verified
- 2 July 2026, against Google's published documents
What AI is in it?
- The chat itself. Whatever someone types, pastes or uploads goes to Google's servers to be answered, the same shape as ChatGPT.
- Everywhere Google already is. Gemini is built into Android phones, Chrome and Google search, so staff meet it without ever deciding to visit an AI tool. The assistant on a work phone is the same Gemini described here.
Does your data train AI models?
Depends on the account.
On personal accounts, with the Keep Activity setting on, which is the default, Google says it uses your activity to provide, develop and improve its services, "including training generative AI models". Turn Keep Activity off and future chats are not used for training, unless you send feedback.
Two details deserve daylight.
A subset of chats goes to human reviewers to improve Google's services, and reviewed chats are kept for up to three years. And Google's own privacy hub says, in its own words: "Please don't enter confidential information that you wouldn't want a reviewer to see or Google to use to improve our services." That sentence, from the vendor, is your staff rule written for you.
Work and school accounts under Google Workspace sit under different terms, which the Google Workspace entry covers.
Where is your data processed?
Google LLC for UK users.
For people in the UK, Gemini is provided by Google LLC, the American company; Google Ireland covers the EEA and Switzerland, and since Brexit that is not us.
Google does not publish a per-chat processing location. Even with Keep Activity off, chats are retained for 72 hours, and Google still uses them to respond and to protect its services.
What changes between free and paid?
The account is the story.
As with ChatGPT, the tier that matters is not free versus paid, it is personal versus organisational.
A staff member chatting to Gemini on a personal Google account is a consumer, and your organisation has no contract, no visibility and no say in the settings. Google Workspace accounts move the same chat under terms your organisation actually holds.
Can your organisation turn it off?
Not for personal accounts.
If staff use personal Google accounts, there is nothing for your organisation to control: the settings belong to the individual, including Keep Activity. Google Workspace gives administrators actual controls, which is the subject of its own entry.
What does this mean for the people you support?
Gemini is closer to hand than the other chatbots because it lives on the phone and in the browser staff already hold, which means it gets used without anyone deciding to use an AI tool.
A support worker asking their Android phone to tidy up case notes is having that conversation with Google, on consumer terms, on a device your organisation may not even manage.
What to check this week
- Find the setting on personal accounts. Anyone using Gemini for anything work adjacent should open Gemini's settings and check Keep Activity, and switch it off if they would not want the chat used for training. It is on by default.
- Adopt Google's own sentence as the rule. "Don't enter confidential information you wouldn't want a reviewer to see." Put it in your AI policy verbatim, credited to Google. Nobody can argue with the vendor's own advice.
- Give regular users a proper home. If people rely on it, a Google Workspace plan with Gemini, or a private alternative, puts the use under an agreement your organisation holds rather than the member of staff's personal account.
Sources
Everything above is my plain English reading of what Google publishes. The originals:
- Google: Gemini Apps Privacy Hub reviewed 2 July 2026
Vendors change these documents quietly and often. If you spot something out of date, email me and I'll re-verify the entry.
What this page cannot tell you
This page can tell you what Google Gemini does with what goes into it. It cannot tell you what goes into it at your organisation, and that is the half that matters.
The answers above kept splitting on whose account it is, and the free personal kind is invisible to you: it shows up in no system you run and on no bill you pay, and nobody declares it on a survey.
So the next step is not a setting. It is finding out what is being pasted, by whom, from which accounts, which is what a discovery is for. And your team needs a rule clearer than "be careful", which my free Charity AI Policy Generator writes with you in a few minutes.
See your whole toolkit at once
This page covers one tool. The AI Exposure Report Generator covers your toolkit: tick the tools your charity uses and get one report showing what the AI inside each of them does with your data, as a Word document you can table at your next meeting. Free, and nothing you tick leaves your browser.
The Report Generator, start to finish: tick your tools, read your exposure, download the report.
Read the other tools
The same questions, answered for every tool in the directory.
Your office suite
Microsoft 365 Copilot
The AI inside Word, Excel, Outlook and Teams. It can reach whatever the signed in person can reach.
Verified 2 July 2026 →
Google Workspace with Gemini
Gemini inside Gmail, Docs, Drive and Meet. Google says your content is not used to train models outside your domain. What it can reach is the longer answer.
Verified 3 July 2026 →AI chatbots
ChatGPT
The one your staff are probably already using. What happens to what they type depends entirely on whose account it is.
Verified 2 July 2026 →
Google Gemini
Google's chatbot, one tap away on Android phones, in Chrome and in search. On a personal account, the training switch is on until someone finds it.
You are here
Claude
Anthropic's chatbot. The same personal versus organisational story as the others, with the training question put to you as a setting.
Verified 2 July 2026 →Meeting notetakers
Otter.ai
The notetaker that joins your meetings, and can invite itself to the next one. What it hears may help train its AI.
Verified 2 July 2026 →
Microsoft Teams
The meeting recorder your charity already owns. Everything it captures becomes a file in OneDrive and SharePoint, where the rest of the AI can reach it.
Verified 3 July 2026 →
Zoom AI Companion
The AI inside the video calls much of the sector runs on. Zoom's no training promise is unusually specific, and there is a reason it is worded that way.
Verified 2 July 2026 →
Fathom
The free notetaker that arrives one personal install at a time. The recordings live in the US, and the training answer has two halves.
Verified 3 July 2026 →Charity CRMs
Beacon
A UK charity CRM with AI on every plan since 2024. Beacon publishes where your data sits and how to switch the AI off, which leaves one question to ask them directly.
Verified 2 July 2026 →
Donorfy
A UK charity CRM where the AI mostly arrives through the side door: optional integrations. What you connect decides where your supporter data goes.
Verified 2 July 2026 →
CiviCRM
The open source CRM ships no AI of its own. What that is worth to you depends on which CiviCRM you are running: one your organisation hosts, or a hosted product somebody sells you. Everything below splits along that line.
Verified 20 July 2026 →
Salesforce
In much of the sector through ten free licences. The AI paperwork is detailed and mostly reassuring, with one default that runs the other way.
Verified 3 July 2026 →Accounts
Xero
Your accounts package now has an assistant called JAX. Xero says your data is not used to train its AI, and names the AI companies your questions travel to.
Verified 20 July 2026 →
QuickBooks
Intuit's accounts package now has an assistant throughout. Its privacy statement says your information is used to train its AI models, and it says so in as many words.
Verified 3 July 2026 →Marketing and design
Mailchimp
Your supporter mailing list lives here, and Mailchimp belongs to Intuit now, which means the same small print as QuickBooks covers it.
Verified 3 July 2026 →
Canva
The design tool half the sector lives in, free through Canva for Nonprofits. Whether your uploads help train AI depends on whose account they sit in.
Verified 3 July 2026 →