How to Opt Out of AI Training
Every Major Platform — 2026 Master Guide

Published July 13, 2026 · Updated August 18, 2026 · Facts last verified August 18, 2026

Most AI and social platforms now train their models on what you type, post, or upload — and on the majority of them, that setting is on by default. The good news: most of them let you opt out, though not all and not everywhere — Meta offers a statutory objection in the EU, UK and Brazil and no equivalent guaranteed switch elsewhere. The catch: every platform hides the switch somewhere different, and opting out never does quite as much as people assume. This master guide gives you the exact 2026 steps for every major platform, explains what opting out really changes, and covers the one move that beats opting out entirely.

Menus and setting names change often, so treat the steps below as a map, not a screenshot — if a label has moved, look for the nearest equivalent in the same settings area, and check the platform's current help page (linked at the end).

What Opting Out Actually Does — and Doesn't

Before the steps, five patterns that hold on most platforms — patterns rather than laws, since each has exceptions noted below. They save a lot of false confidence:

• Mostly future-only. Opting out stops new data being used for training and cannot pull back anything already absorbed into a trained model. Anthropic is a partial exception worth knowing: it says switching the setting off also keeps previously stored chats out of future training runs.
• It doesn't delete your history. Your conversations usually still exist in your account and on the provider's servers — opting out of training and deleting data are separate actions.
• It doesn't stop retention or safety review. Providers still store data for a period and can review it for safety, abuse, and legal reasons, regardless of the training toggle.
• Business and API tiers are usually already excluded — though it is plan- and feature-dependent, not a rule, and "not trained on" is not the same as "not retained": Anthropic, for instance, still keeps ordinary API inputs and outputs for up to 30 days absent a different arrangement.
• Opting out ≠ anonymity. The provider still knows it's you. It just promises not to learn from your content going forward.

Quick Reference: Every Major Platform at a Glance

ChatGPT (OpenAI)

On consumer ChatGPT, conversations can be used to improve models unless you turn it off.

1. Open Settings → Data Controls.
2. Turn off "Improve the model for everyone."
3. For one-off sessions, use Temporary Chat, which stays out of history, memory, and training.

Business, Enterprise, Edu, and API usage are not used for training by default.

Claude (Anthropic)

Since 28 August 2025, Claude Free, Pro and Max train on your chats unless you opt out. Be careful with the retention figures that circulate alongside this: opting out does not put your history on a 30-day timer — chats stay until you delete them, and the 30 days is the window in which a deleted chat is purged from back-end storage. The five years describes data kept in Anthropic's training pipelines when you allow model improvement.

1. Open Settings → Privacy.
2. Turn off the model-improvement toggle.
3. Know the written exceptions. Anthropic's privacy policy effective 8 July 2026 says that even if you opt out, it will use inputs and outputs for model improvement where a conversation is flagged for safety review or where you reported the material yourself. Safety-flagged inputs and outputs can be retained up to two years, and classification scores up to seven.

Claude for Work and the Anthropic API don't train on your data. See our deep dive: does Claude store your conversations?

Gemini (Google)

On the consumer Gemini app, a subset of chats can be reviewed by humans and used to improve Google's models by default.

1. Open your Gemini settings / Activity controls.
2. Turn off "Keep Activity" (formerly Gemini Apps Activity).
3. Optionally set a shorter auto-delete window (default is 18 months).

Even with it off, chats are kept 72 hours, and chats already sampled for review can be held up to 3 years disconnected from your account and are not removed when you delete your activity. Note what "off" does and does not buy: it stops training and saved activity, but Google states that even with Keep Activity off, or in temporary chats, it still uses your chats to respond and to protect its users, including with help from human reviewers. Paid API, Vertex AI, and Workspace don't train on your data. More: does Gemini read your data?

Grok (xAI)

Consumer Grok trains on your chats by default, and there's a second stream from X.

1. In the Grok app: Settings → Data Controls (or on grok.com: Settings → Data) and turn off "Improve the model."
2. If you use Grok on X, the second switch is buried: Settings and privacy → Privacy and safety → Data sharing and personalization → Grok & Third-party Collaborators → Data Sharing, then turn off "Allow your public data as well as your interactions, inputs, and results with Grok and xAI to be used for training and fine-tuning."
3. Use Private Chat (the ghost icon) for one-off sessions.

The xAI API doesn't train on your content. More: does Grok save your chats?

Perplexity

Perplexity uses your searches to improve its AI by default, on Free, Pro and Max alike.

1. Open your account settings and go to Preferences (Account and Preferences are sibling pages, not nested).
2. Turn off "AI data retention" — some of Perplexity's own pages call the same function "AI Data Usage", so match the description rather than the exact string.
3. Delete your search history periodically, and be cautious with the Comet browser and Personal Search.

The Sonar API keeps zero data retention. More: does Perplexity track you?

Meta AI (Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp)

Meta trains on public Facebook and Instagram content from adults and on your interactions with Meta AI. It says it does not train on private messages with friends and family — so the common shorthand that Meta "trains on your WhatsApp" is wrong; what counts is what you say to Meta AI. There is usually no simple on/off toggle.

1. In the EU, UK, or Brazil, Meta offers a built-in objection: look for an "AI at Meta" / objection option in your account settings and submit it.
2. Elsewhere (e.g. the US), there is no equivalent guaranteed opt-out. A contact form exists, but do not assume it carries the same weight as the statutory objection right above.
3. The most reliable lever outside those regions is behavioural: keep posts non-public, and treat anything typed to Meta AI as training data.

These objections apply to future use; they don't remove data already used.

Microsoft Copilot

Consumer Copilot can use your conversations for model training; the control is clear once you find it.

1. Sign in, then open your profile → Privacy (on copilot.com, in the Windows/macOS app, or in the mobile app's Account menu).
2. Turn off "Training on conversation activity" and "Training on voice conversations."

Microsoft 365 Copilot for business/enterprise does not train on your data.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn uses your profile and activity to train generative-AI features by default.

1. Go to Settings & Privacy → Data privacy → Data for Generative AI improvement.
2. Turn off "Use my data for training content-creation AI models."

To object to non-content AI uses (personalization, security), you must submit LinkedIn's Data Processing Objection Form.

GitHub Copilot

From 24 April 2026, GitHub may use your interactions — inputs, outputs, code snippets and associated context — to train its models on Copilot Free, Pro, Pro+ and Max unless you opt out.

1. Open your profile picture → Copilot settings.
2. Set "Allow GitHub to use my data for AI model training" to Disabled.

Copilot Business and Enterprise have data protection by default and do not show this setting. Note the scope of what is covered: it is your interaction data — what you send and receive while working — rather than a sweep of your repositories.

Mistral Vibe (formerly Le Chat)

Mistral renamed Le Chat to Vibe, announced on 28 May 2026 — so guides still saying "Le Chat" are out of date. On the free and consumer tiers your interactions can be used to improve Mistral's models.

1. On the web: Admin panel → Manage → Vibe → Privacy, and disable "Allow your interactions to be used to train our models."
2. On mobile the wording differs: Settings → Account → Data & Account Controls, and deselect "Enable data sharing."

Team and Enterprise are off by default; Free, Pro and Education users have to opt out themselves.

Character.AI

Frequently left out of guides like this one, and worth including because the conversations tend to be unusually personal.

1. Open your account's model-training setting and turn it off.
2. Note the scope caveat: Character.AI documents this control for EEA and UK users on both app and web, so what you see depends on where you are.

DeepSeek

DeepSeek trains on conversations by default. There is more to work with than "limited controls" suggests: the app exposes a model-improvement opt-out in its data controls, and you can delete individual chats, delete the account outright, and send privacy requests by email. Two cautions matter more than the toggle: your history stays on DeepSeek's servers (in China, under weaker data protections), and opting out does not remove it. For genuinely sensitive material, opting out of DeepSeek training is not a meaningful safeguard — keep that content off the platform entirely.

All of that describes DeepSeek's own app and API. The model itself is a separate question, because DeepSeek publishes its weights openly and around twenty independent companies run it on their own hardware. That is the loophole worth knowing about: you can use the model without using the company. On Secret Chat, DeepSeek requests go only to an allowlist of US-headquartered inference providers whose declared policy is that they do not collect user data, never to DeepSeek's own API — see DeepSeek without the Chinese servers. It is the one entry on this page where the fix is not a toggle at all.

The Catch Every Opt-Out Shares

Even after you flip every switch above, three things remain true: your past data may already be in a training set, your conversations are still stored and can be reviewed, and you have to repeat this on every service, on every account, and again whenever a provider changes its defaults (as several did in the last year). Opting out is worth doing — but it is maintenance, not a fix.

The Stronger Move: Don't Be Identifiable in the First Place

Every opt-out on this page works on the same lever: it asks a company that knows who you are to please not learn from your content. A more durable approach flips that around — stop being identifiable, so there is nothing to learn about you in the first place. That is what Secret Chat AI is built for: it is an anonymizer and depersonalizer. Its whole design is no profile, no association, no training — it makes you unlinkable to the model providers, so you use the top models as a stranger.

• No profile of you. Registration takes an email — used only for account access and payment, never to store or associate your prompts with you — with no name, phone number, or behavioral profile built across your chats.
• No chat associated with you. Secret Chat reaches the leading models through their business APIs on your behalf, so the provider sees the gateway, not you — no identity, account, or IP attached, and on the API your prompts aren't used for training anyway.
• Nothing kept under your name. Your history lives in your browser's local storage, not a provider account, with a per-message Session Privacy Report.

This reframes the whole opt-out chore: instead of managing a training toggle on a dozen services, your requests reach the models with no identity attached, so even where a provider retains data, it is not linked to you. The one honest boundary is that Secret Chat AI is an anonymizer, not a content filter — the provider still reads your prompt to answer it, so remove names and identifiers you would not want a model to see. It removes who you are from the request, not what the request says.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. Does opting out delete data already used for training?

   Essentially no. Opting out is future-facing: it stops new data being used and cannot remove anything already absorbed into a trained model. One nuance worth knowing — Anthropic says turning the setting off also keeps previously stored chats out of future training runs, though not out of training already done. It does not remove anything already in a training set.

2. Does opting out of training stop the platform storing my chats?

   No. Storage/retention and training are separate. Your conversations are usually still kept in your account and on the provider's servers, and can be reviewed for safety, unless you also delete them.

3. Which AI tools don't train on my data by default?

   Business and enterprise tiers and most paid APIs — including OpenAI's API, Anthropic's API and Claude for Work, Google's paid API and Workspace, the xAI API, Perplexity's Sonar API, and Mistral's paid/API plans — generally don't train on your data by default. The default-on problem is mainly a consumer one.

4. Do I have to opt out again on each device or account?

   Settings usually apply per account, so once per account is typically enough — but you must repeat it on every separate service, and re-check after providers change their defaults, which happens often.

5. Is there a way to avoid all this opt-out maintenance?

   Use a tool that never links your queries to you in the first place. Secret Chat AI reaches the top models anonymously through their APIs (which don't train on that traffic), with no profile, an email used only for billing, and history kept in your browser — so there's no per-platform training toggle to manage. It's an anonymizer, not a content filter, so still keep identifiers out of prompts.

Conclusion

Opting out of AI training is worth doing on every platform you use — flip the toggles above, and you stop the biggest, most avoidable form of data reuse. Just keep the limits in mind: it's future-only, it doesn't delete your history or stop retention, and it's an ongoing chore across a dozen services that keep changing their defaults. If you would rather not play that game at all, the stronger move is to stop being identifiable in the first place: use the leading models anonymously, with no profile and nothing tied to your name.

Sources

• OpenAI — Data Controls FAQ
• Anthropic — Updates to Consumer Terms and Privacy Policy
• Google — Gemini Apps Privacy Hub
• xAI — Privacy Policy
• Perplexity — Data Collection
• Microsoft — Copilot privacy controls
• LinkedIn — Generative AI FAQs
• Mistral — Can I opt out of training?