Does Gemini share your data? What Google does with it

Google’s short answer is that it doesn’t sell what you type into Gemini. That’s accurate, and it leaves most of the question untouched: who else gets to read a chat, and what is still sitting on Google’s side after you press delete.

The answer also moves with the login: a personal Google Account, a Workspace work account and a Gemini API key each run under different terms. Which one you’re in matters more to me than any toggle. Anthropic splits Claude along similar lines, with the borders elsewhere.

Who Google passes your chats to

Google’s privacy policy, effective 16 October 2026, names four situations in which personal information leaves the company: your consent, your organisation’s domain administrator, service providers working on Google’s instructions, and legal reasons such as a court order or a government request.

Gemini adds routes of its own. Google’s Gemini notice mentions human reviewers, the apps you connect, public links to shared chats and Canvas apps built by other users, whose creators can see whatever you share and store it wherever they like.

Among them, the Canvas route is the one I’d steer staff away from at work: a stranger’s app, inside Google’s interface, with the data leaving on the creator’s terms. Four of these exits are yours to shut, and human review only partly. Rules for staff belong in a written AI policy for your team.

Do humans read Gemini conversations?

Some, yes. Google says a subset of chats is reviewed by people, including trained reviewers at its service providers, who rate the answers and suggest better ones. Chats are also reviewed for safety and for breaches of Google’s terms. Before a chat goes to a service provider, Google detaches it from your account.

Detached is not deleted. Reviewed chats, with related data such as your language, device type, location information and feedback, are kept for up to three years, and deleting your activity doesn’t reach them. Google also asks users not to enter confidential information they wouldn’t want a reviewer to see.

The feedback button is where I’m most careful. With Keep Activity off, one piece of feedback sends Google the last 24 hours of your chats as context, uploads included, kept up to three years once reviewed. A file also carries names and dates in its hidden properties, and those go with it.

Keep Activity, temporary chats and the 72-hour copy

Keep Activity is the setting behind most of this on a personal account, and Google’s help page says it’s on by default for anyone 18 or over. While it’s on, chats are saved to Gemini Apps Activity and can be used to improve Google’s AI, with human reviewers involved.

Switching it off, or opening a temporary chat, stops future chats being used for training unless you send feedback. Storage doesn’t stop: Google keeps each chat with your account for 72 hours to answer you and to protect Google, its users and the public, with human reviewers where needed.

For a one-off question about a client, my choice is a temporary chat, because it skips training without switching off everything else. Turning Keep Activity off also cuts Gemini off from Google Workspace apps, which people notice quickly. Clearing what’s already saved is covered in our walkthrough for wiping chat history.

Connected apps and extensions: what the assistant can reach

Connected Apps, which many people still call Gemini extensions, let the assistant read your Gmail, Drive, calendar or Google Photos and work with outside services, including Model Context Protocol servers you add yourself. Gemini saves and uses what comes back under its own notice, which includes improving Gemini Apps.

Two lines in that notice get less attention than they deserve. Third-party services handle your data under their own privacy policies. For custom third-party connections, Google says it does not monitor or secure the data, and warns they may expose your data, passwords, devices and accounts.

Disconnecting an app doesn’t delete what’s already in Gemini Apps Activity. If it were my firm, no work mailbox would ever be connected to a personal Gemini account, and an IT provider that manages your computers can enforce that more reliably than a memo.

Gemini in Google Workspace: what a work account changes

On a work or school account the rules are different, and the personal notice says so itself. Google’s Workspace privacy hub, updated 6 October 2026, says your content isn’t used for other customers, and isn’t human reviewed or used to train models outside your domain without permission.

Workspace data counts as customer data under Google’s Cloud Data Processing Addendum, so Google acts on your organisation’s instructions: what Article 28 of the GDPR, in Europe and in Britain, calls a processor. The administrator sets retention: 90 days to indefinite for Gemini in Docs or Gmail, up to 36 months for the Gemini app.

Data regions are narrower than they sound: the United States or Europe, minus Gemini Notebook, logs and cached content. For a small office already paying for Workspace, moving staff off personal accounts is the cheapest upgrade, and the first on my list. Nonimo for whole organisations adds the step before either account sees a name.

Gemini API and AI Studio: paid versus free tier

Developers meet a third set of rules, the Gemini API Additional Terms of Service, effective 23 March 2026. On unpaid services, which include Google AI Studio and the free API quota, Google uses prompts and responses to improve its products, and human reviewers may read and annotate them.

The same terms tell you not to send sensitive, confidential or personal information to the unpaid tier. On paid services, Google doesn’t use prompts or responses to improve its products, but logs them for a limited period to catch policy violations. The terms give no number of days.

In the EEA, Switzerland or the UK, the paid-tier data terms cover free quota too, and AI Studio counts as paid once the account reaches an active Cloud Billing project. Real customer records stay out of any prototype, in my book, until billing is on. Nonimo Gateway masks those records before either tier sees them.

Deleting Gemini history: what goes and what stays

On a personal account, deletion happens in Gemini Apps Activity, where you can remove one chat, the last hour or day, a custom range or everything. Google says removal begins at once, first from view and then from its storage systems. Several copies sit outside that button.

Reviewed chats are the main one. A shared chat is another: deleting it leaves the public link alive until you remove it under Your public links. Gems survive the deletion of a conversation held with them, and data that other Google services saved while you used Gemini has to be cleared in those services.

Public links are where I’d spend the first five minutes, since anyone holding one can still open the chat. The same exercise for pictures is in how long each assistant holds an uploaded image.

Is pasting a client’s file a disclosure? What regulators say

No regulator has banned Gemini, but several have described what pasting client details into a public chatbot amounts to. Australia’s OAIC, in guidance updated 17 January 2025, uses an insurer entering a customer’s claim into a chatbot as its example, and treats it as a disclosure to the chatbot’s owners.

In Europe, Ireland’s Data Protection Commission opened a cross-border inquiry into Google Ireland in September 2024, asking whether a data protection impact assessment was required before EU personal data went into developing its PaLM 2 model. In the US, the FTC has warned model providers that broken privacy commitments can be enforced.

None of that makes Gemini a forbidden tool. It makes the account choice a legal choice, and I’d never sign off on leaving it to whoever happened to open the tab. If a file has already gone in, deciding if the paste was a reportable breach comes next, and it has its own guide.

Before the next client file goes into the chat box

The copy you can’t delete is the one a reviewer picked, held for up to three years apart from your account. Whether it carries a client’s name is decided before you send, on your side of the screen, which is where Nonimo’s desktop software for Mac and Windows works.

It replaces names, account numbers and other identifiers with placeholders before Gemini reads the prompt, and puts them back when you copy the answer. A reviewer who opens that chat later finds a placeholder. In the app, your text never passes through our servers; what it does send us is listed openly.

For a small practice I’d put work accounts first and labels before every paste second. Run the app on the next document headed for Gemini: it behaves the same whichever account sits behind the tab, and the plans for a whole office are a click away.

Sources

• Google, Gemini Apps Privacy Hub: human reviewers and service providers, the three-year hold on reviewed chats, 72 hours with Keep Activity off, feedback context, Connected Apps, Canvas, no selling and no ads.
• Google, Gemini Apps Help, “Manage & delete your activity in Gemini Apps”: Keep Activity on by default from 18, auto-delete options, public links surviving a deleted chat.
• Google, Generative AI in Google Workspace Privacy Hub: no review or training outside your domain without permission, the processing addendum, retention ranges.
• Google Workspace, “Data covered by data regions”: United States or Europe; Gemini Notebook, logs and cached content not covered.
• Google, Gemini API Additional Terms of Service, effective 23 March 2026: unpaid and paid tiers, reviewers, abuse logging, EEA, Switzerland and UK.
• Google Privacy Policy, effective 16 October 2026: the four sharing situations and servers around the world.
• OAIC, Guidance on privacy and the use of commercially available AI products: the insurer example of a disclosure to a chatbot’s owners.
• Data Protection Commission, inquiry into Google’s AI model: cross-border inquiry into Google Ireland over PaLM 2, 12 September 2024.
• FTC, AI companies: uphold your privacy and confidentiality commitments: broken commitments by model providers can be enforced.
• EUR-Lex, General Data Protection Regulation: Article 28(3)(a), processing only on documented instructions.

Accessed 10 November 2026.