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What each AI chatbot keeps

September 17, 2026

One table, updated monthly, of what the major AI chat tools retain and for how long. Every row is sourced to the vendor's own documentation or to reporting that names its source; anything a vendor has not published is marked not published rather than guessed. Last verified 17 September 2026. If a row is wrong or out of date, tell us and it gets fixed in the next pass.

How to read this

Four things are worth separating, because tools that look similar differ on all of them. Retention is how long something exists. Deletion is whether removing it from your view removes it from their systems. Training is whether your conversations improve the model. Anonymity is whether the provider knows who you are in the first place.

A tool can score well on one and badly on another. Duck.ai does not know who you are and still holds chats for up to thirty days. Lumo encrypts your history so thoroughly it cannot read it, and requires an account to do so. The right question is not which is "most private" but which property you need for the thing you are about to type.

The table

ChatGPT (OpenAI). Retention: chats persist until deleted, with no automatic expiry. Deletion: OpenAI states removed conversations leave its systems within roughly 30 days, subject to legal hold. Temporary Chats stay out of your history and are removed on a similar window, but exist server-side during it. Uploads: stored separately from the conversation, so deleting a chat does not reliably remove the file. Training: consumer accounts by default, with a data-controls opt-out; Business, Enterprise and Edu workspaces excluded by default. Legal-hold history: yes — a May 2025 preservation order in the New York Times litigation suspended deletion for roughly five months, and a 20-million-conversation sample was ordered produced. Detail, uploads, the litigation.

Claude (Anthropic). Retention: chats persist until deleted. Training: reviewers in 2026 describe consumer plans as training by default with an opt-out available, and an incognito mode for sessions you do not want kept. Anthropic's commercial tiers are described as excluded. Legal-hold history: none reported. Attributed to reviewer coverage rather than a vendor page, because Anthropic's consumer policy wording has shifted more than once this year — treat this row as the softest in the table.

Gemini (Google). Retention: tied to Google Account activity settings rather than the app alone, so the answer depends on settings most people have never opened. Deletion: follows Google's activity-deletion controls. Training: human reviewers may read sampled conversations, per Google's own guidance, which is why Google advises against entering anything confidential. Not published: a single chat-specific retention window independent of account settings.

Copilot (Microsoft). Retention: governed by Microsoft 365 or consumer account policy depending on tier, not by a chat-specific window. Not published: a consumer-facing retention figure comparable to OpenAI's 30 days. Note that Copilot's video generation was retired in June 2026 — separate page.

Duck.ai (DuckDuckGo). Anonymity: no account required; DuckDuckGo proxies requests so model providers do not see your IP. Training: providers have agreed not to train on the conversations, per DuckDuckGo. Retention: DuckDuckGo's policy states chats are removed within 30 days. History: none persists, because there is no account to attach it to. Detail.

Lumo (Proton). Encryption: zero-access encryption on saved conversations, per Proton — meaning Proton cannot read them. Training: Proton states chats are not used to train its models. Logs: none, per Proton. Account: required. This is the strongest architectural guarantee here for anyone who wants a history that still stays sealed.

Leo (Brave). Retention: per Brave, conversations are not logged or retained after a response is returned; any history lives on your device. Anonymity: requests proxied so they are not tied to your IP; no login on the free tier. Account: not required.

nixm. Retention: the conversation is never written to a database. What persists is a small distilled signal — intent and a short summary — which dissolves seven days after creation, along with any reference image uploaded for a video. Deletion: nothing to delete. Training: no conversation exists to train on. Account: not required to start. How that works.

The pattern worth noticing

Three of the eight publish a specific retention number. The rest describe their policies in terms of account settings, tiers or enterprise agreements — which is not evasion so much as a different architecture, but it does mean the honest answer to "how long do they keep it" is often "that depends on a setting you have not checked."

And retention policy is a default, not a guarantee. The 2025 preservation order is the only worked example in this table of what happens when a court disagrees with a company's deletion schedule, and the answer was that the schedule stopped. What that established. The only row that was structurally unaffected was the one with nothing logged — OpenAI's zero-retention API endpoints were excluded from preservation because there was nothing to preserve.

Corrections

Rows are verified monthly and the date at the top moves when they are. Vendor policies change quietly and this table will sometimes be behind. If you find a row that is wrong, or a vendor that has published a figure marked here as not published, say so and it gets corrected in the next pass with the source noted.

The row with nothing in it

Open nixm and seed a signal — no account, no history, nothing stored.

frequently asked

How long does ChatGPT keep chats?

Indefinitely while they exist in your account. Deletion starts a roughly 30-day removal window on OpenAI's systems, subject to legal hold.

Which AI chatbots do not retain conversations?

Per their own documentation: Brave Leo does not log or retain after a response, and nixm never writes the conversation to a database. Duck.ai holds chats up to 30 days but requires no account.

Which AI chatbot encrypts saved chats?

Proton Lumo, with zero-access encryption — Proton states it cannot read them. A Proton account is required.

Do AI chatbots train on my conversations?

It varies by tier. Consumer ChatGPT trains by default with an opt-out; Business, Enterprise and Edu are excluded. Reviewers describe Claude consumer plans similarly. Proton, Brave and DuckDuckGo state they do not.

Has a court ever overridden an AI retention policy?

Yes. A May 2025 order in the New York Times litigation required OpenAI to preserve conversations it would otherwise have deleted, for roughly five months.

Why are some rows marked "not published"?

Because the vendor has not published a figure. Guessing one would make the table less useful than admitting the gap.

How often is this updated?

Monthly, with the verification date at the top of the page. Corrections are welcome and noted.

try it now — no account, nothing stored. even the signal dissolves in seven days.

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