this post was submitted on 15 Apr 2025

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Privacy

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412

What Kinds of Data do AI Chatbots Collect? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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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

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[–] [email protected] 139 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

Locally run AI: 0

[–] [email protected] 17 points 2 weeks ago (8 children)

Are there tutorials on how to do this? Should it be set up on a server on my local network??? How hard is it to set up? I have so many questions.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

I recommend GPT4all if you want run locally on your PC. It is super easy.

If you want to run in a separate server. Ollama + some kind of web UI is the best.

Ollama can also be run locally but IMO it take more learning than GUI app like GPT4all.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

If by more learning you mean learning

ollama run deepseek-r1:7b

Then 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.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (2 children)

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 with text on it". I guess on Lemmy the situation is better. It is just my bad habit.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 weeks ago

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?

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 weeks ago

Check out Ollama, it’s probably the easiest way to get started these days. It provides tooling and an api that different chat frontends can connect to.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 weeks ago

https://ollama.ai/, this is what I've been using for over a year now, new models come out regularly and you just "ollama pull " and then it's available to run locally. Then you can use docker to run https://www.openwebui.com/ locally, giving it a ChatGPT-style interface (but even better and more configurable and you can run prompts against any number of models you select at once.)

All free and available to everyone.

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (2 children)

If only my hardware could support it..

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 weeks ago

I can actually use locally some smaller models on my 2017 laptop (though I have increased the RAM to 16 GB).

You'd be surprised how mich can be done with how little.

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[–] [email protected] 106 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Me when Gemini (aka google) collects more data than anyone else:

Not really shocked, we all know that google sucks

[–] [email protected] 33 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

I would hazard a guess that the only reason those others aren't as high is because they don't have the same access to data. It's not that they don't want to, they simply can't (yet).

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Which is good (for now). Glad I don't use that shit

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[–] [email protected] 58 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Who would have guessed that the advertising company collects a lot of data

[–] [email protected] 29 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

And I can't possibly imagine that Grok actually collects less than ChatGPT.

[–] [email protected] 30 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Data from surfshark aka nordvpn lol. Take it with a few chunks of salt

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[–] [email protected] 49 points 2 weeks ago (6 children)

DeepSeek at home: None

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 weeks ago

How much VRAM does your machine have? Are you using open webui?

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[–] [email protected] 28 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

Back in the day, malware makers could only dream of collecting as much data as Gemini does.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

And what about goddamn Mistral?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Its French as far as I know so at least it abides to gdpr by default.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

All services you see above are provided to EU citizens, which is why they also have to abide by GDPR. GDPR does not disallow the gathering of information. Google, for example, is GDPR compliant, yet they are number 1 on that list. That’s why I would like to know if European companies still try to have a business case with personal data or not.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

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.

(Yes I'm being overly dramatic about this, but I've lost trust ages ago in big tech companies)

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

Fully agree, which is also why I choose EU/Swiss made services by default

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[–] [email protected] 25 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

I have a bridge to sell you if you think grok is collecting the least amount of info.

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[–] [email protected] 23 points 2 weeks ago (5 children)

Who TF using Grok.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 weeks ago

Fascists. Why?

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[–] [email protected] 22 points 2 weeks ago

I'm interested in seeing how this changes when using duck duck go front end at duck.ai

there's no login and history is stored locally (probably remotely too)

[–] [email protected] 19 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

Note this is if you use their apps. Not the api. Not through another app.

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

Anyone has these data from Mistral, HuggingChat and MetaAI ? Would be nice to add them too

Edit : Leo from brave would be great to compare too

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

Gemini: "Other Data"

Like, what's fucking left!?

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 weeks ago

Or you could use Deepseek's workaround and run it locally. You know, open source and all.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Almost none of this data is possible to collect when using Tor Browser

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

Use a third party API. Pay with monero.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Wow, it’s a whole new level of f*cked up when Zuck collects more data than the Winnie the Pooh (DeepSeek). 😳

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

The idea that US apps are somehow better than Chinese apps when it comes to collecting and selling user data is complete utter propaganda.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

Is there away to fake all the data they try to collect?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (2 children)

Pretty sure this is what they scrape from your device if you install their app. I dont know how else they would get access to contacts and location and stuff. So yeah you can just run it on a virtual android device and feed it garbage data, but i assume the app or their backend will detect that and throw out your data.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 weeks ago

How about if I only use the web version?

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 weeks ago

I just came across this article which for people who are into self hosting can take a look and participate. It's basically a tool that generating never ending web pages with non sense that load slow (but not too slow the AI tools move on) to slow down and thus cost them more to scrape the internet if enough people are doing it. You can also hide it in a way that legit user would never see this on your site:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/01/ai-haters-build-tarpits-to-trap-and-trick-ai-scrapers-that-ignore-robots-txt/ https://zadzmo.org/code/nepenthes/

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

anyone whos competent in the matter: what about the french competition chat.mistral.ai

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 weeks ago

+1 for Mistral, they were the first (or one of the first) Apache open source licensed models. I run Mistral-7B and variant fine tunes locally, and they've always been really high quality overall. Mistral-Medium packed a punch (mid-size obviously) but it definitely competes with the big ones at least.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 weeks ago (4 children)

Am I missing something? What do the numbers mean in relation to the type? Sub types?

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