In Brief (TL;DR)
We analyze how chatbots handle user information and offer practical tips to protect sensitive data when using generative AI.
Discover how chatbots manage your information and what strategies to adopt to protect your online privacy.
Learn practical tips to protect your sensitive data and use generative AI without risking your privacy.
The devil is in the details. 👇 Keep reading to discover the critical steps and practical tips to avoid mistakes.
Artificial intelligence has forcefully entered our lives, transforming the way we work, study, and communicate. From voice assistants that turn on our home lights to advanced chatbots that write emails for us, the convenience is undeniable. However, this digital revolution brings with it a fundamental question that is often ignored: what happens to our personal data?
Every time we interact with a generative AI, we provide information. Sometimes it’s harmless data, other times it’s sensitive details about our health, finances, or political opinions. In the European context, and specifically in Italy, the issue of privacy is not just technical, but deeply cultural and regulatory. We live in an era where the tradition of confidentiality clashes with the innovation of total sharing.
In this article, we will analyze the real risks to privacy in the age of AI, examining current regulations like the GDPR and the new AI Act, and provide practical advice for navigating this digital sea without sinking. We will understand how to balance the efficiency of modern tools with the necessary protection of one’s digital identity, also exploring the best practices for using generative AI securely.
The Regulatory Context: Italy and Europe at the Forefront
Europe has distinguished itself globally for a “human-centric” approach to technology. Unlike the market-driven US model or the state-driven Chinese model, the European model places fundamental rights at its core. The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is the cornerstone of this defense.
The GDPR states that personal data must be processed lawfully, fairly, and transparently. However, the training of large language models (LLMs) often occurs on huge datasets scraped from the web, raising questions about the legitimacy of consent. If an AI has “read” your social media posts from ten years ago to learn how to speak, has it violated your privacy?
The Italian Data Protection Authority was the first in the world, in March 2023, to temporarily block ChatGPT. This act sparked a global debate on the need for clear rules for training algorithms.
Today, with the approval of the AI Act, the European Union classifies artificial intelligence systems based on risk. Systems that manipulate human behavior or exploit vulnerabilities are banned, while high-risk systems (like AI used in personnel selection or justice) must comply with very strict transparency and security obligations.
How AI Manages (and Risks Spreading) Your Data
To understand the risks, we need to understand how these systems work. When you write to a chatbot, your words don’t just vanish. They are sent to the provider’s servers, processed, and, in many cases, stored. Companies use these conversations for two main purposes: to improve the model and to monitor security.
The Risk of Continuous Learning
Many users mistakenly believe that AI is a sealed container. In reality, there is a risk that information provided by users will be absorbed by the model and potentially regurgitated in conversations with other users. If a doctor enters a patient’s data to get help with a diagnosis, or a lawyer uploads a confidential contract, that data could enter the learning cycle.
To mitigate this risk, it is crucial to know the privacy settings of the tools we use. Many platforms now offer the option to exclude your chats from training, but it is often an option that must be manually activated (opt-out). For those seeking maximum control, using local solutions is preferable: a useful guide on this topic is the one on Ollama and DeepSeek locally, which explains how to run AI on your own hardware without sending data to the cloud.
Hallucinations and False Data
Another privacy risk is paradoxical: the creation of false but plausible data. AIs can “hallucinate,” attributing actions never taken or quotes never said to real people. This can damage an individual’s online reputation, creating a distorted digital profile that is difficult to rectify, as the “right to be forgotten” is complex to apply within a neural network.
Tradition and Innovation: The Mediterranean Data Culture
In Italy, the relationship with privacy is complex. On one hand, there is a strong culture of family and personal confidentiality. On the other, we are one of the most active populations on social networks and quick to adopt new mobile technologies. This dichotomy creates fertile ground for risks.
Our legal and cultural tradition tends to protect the dignity of the person. In the context of AI, this translates into strong resistance against biometric surveillance and indiscriminate facial recognition in public spaces, practices that the AI Act severely limits. We want innovation, but not at the cost of becoming numbers in a database.
Italian small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), the backbone of the economy, often find themselves unprepared. The adoption of AI tools for marketing or customer management sometimes occurs without a real data protection impact assessment (DPIA), exposing both the company and its customers to regulatory violations.
Practical Strategies to Protect Your Privacy
You don’t have to stop using artificial intelligence to be safe. You just need to adopt a conscious and defensive approach. Here are some concrete strategies to apply immediately.
Anonymizing Prompts
The golden rule is: never enter personally identifiable information (PII) in a prompt. Instead of writing “Write an email for the client Mario Rossi, born on 05/12/1980, tax code…”, use placeholders like “[CLIENT NAME]” or fictitious data. The AI will work on the structure and logical content, and you can insert the real data later, offline.
Managing History and Settings
Regularly check your account settings. On platforms like ChatGPT or Gemini, you can disable chat history. This prevents conversations from being saved long-term and used for training. If you use AI for work, check if your company has an “Enterprise” plan: these versions contractually guarantee that data will not be used to train public models.
Choosing the Right Tool
Not all AIs are created equal. Some are designed specifically for privacy and security, while others are more “open.” Before entrusting your data to a service, read the privacy policy or consult reliable comparisons, like the one you’ll find in our article on ChatGPT, Gemini, and Copilot, to understand which platform offers the best guarantees for your needs.
Cybersecurity and AI: An Unbreakable Bond
Privacy does not exist without security. The databases of AI companies are coveted targets for cybercriminals. If a hacker were to breach the servers of an AI service provider, millions of private conversations could be exposed. It is essential to protect your accounts with strong passwords and two-factor authentication (2FA).
Furthermore, AI itself is used to create more sophisticated attacks, such as highly personalized phishing emails free of grammatical errors, or voice deepfakes for phone scams. To learn more about how to defend against these advanced threats, we recommend reading our guide on how to protect your privacy and data online.
Awareness is the first line of defense. An informed user is a user who is difficult to deceive and profile.
The Future: Synthetic Privacy and Edge AI
The future of privacy in AI may lie in new technologies. “Synthetic data” is artificially created information that mimics the statistics of real data without containing information about real people. This allows AIs to be trained without violating anyone’s privacy.
Another trend is Edge AI, which involves processing data directly on the user’s device (smartphone or PC) instead of in the cloud. The new processors (NPUs) integrated into modern computers are moving in this direction. This drastically reduces the risk of data leaks, as the information never leaves your device. For those who need to manage large amounts of personal data, it is also crucial to consider where it is stored, evaluating strategies for secure backup and private cloud.
Conclusion
Artificial intelligence represents an extraordinary opportunity for growth and simplification, but in the European and Italian context, it cannot be separated from respect for the individual. Privacy is not an obstacle to innovation, but the necessary condition for innovation to be sustainable and democratic.
Protecting your data requires a mix of regulatory awareness, digital hygiene, and the use of appropriate tools. By staying informed and demanding transparency from tech companies, we can enjoy the benefits of AI without sacrificing our digital freedom. Technology must remain a tool at the service of humanity, and never the other way around.
Frequently Asked Questions
In Italy and Europe, AI services must comply with GDPR, ensuring high standards of transparency. However, conversations can be used to train the models if you do not change the settings. It is crucial to avoid entering sensitive, health, or financial data in chats.
Most chatbots, including those from OpenAI and Google, offer specific options in the settings called Data Controls. By disabling chat history or the model training option, you prevent your conversations from being used to improve the algorithm.
The main risk is the leakage of confidential company data. If you upload internal documents to public and free versions of chatbots, this information could become part of the AI’s knowledge. For professional purposes, it is advisable to use Enterprise versions that guarantee data confidentiality.
The AI Act is the world’s first regulation that classifies AI systems based on risk. It imposes strict transparency and security obligations for high-risk systems and prohibits practices that threaten fundamental rights, ensuring that technological innovation does not trample on the privacy of European citizens.
Yes, under the right to be forgotten provided by the GDPR, users can request the deletion of their personal data. Platforms must provide accessible forms or settings to delete the account or remove specific conversations from their servers.
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