Tell HN: Gemini trains on chat history, even for subscribers (personal accounts)
- ID
- 42997
- Status
- summarized
- Published
- 04 Nov 2026, 6:10 PM
- Fetched
- 05 Nov 2026, 12:01 AM
- Provider
- Hacker News
- Category
- dev-community
- Original URL
- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50363461
- Source URL
- https://hnrss.org/best
Summary
- Score
- 8.0
- Created
- 05 Nov 2026, 12:01 AM
- Tags
- Audience
- developersvibe_codersai_agent_userssaas_founders
What happened
A Hacker News post reports that personal Google AI subscriptions to Gemini can use saved chat history for model training unless 'Keep Activity' is turned off or temporary chats are used. It cites Google support pages saying a subset of chats is human-reviewed, reviewed chats are retained for up to three years even after activity deletion, and Google warns against entering confidential information; disabling activity means chats are lost after 72 hours. The thread drew 356 points and 99 comments.
Why it matters
If you prototype with Gemini's consumer web app using customer data, credentials, or unreleased code, saved history can put that material into training and human-review pipelines. Decide whether to use temporary chats or disable Keep Activity and accept 72-hour history loss, and keep confidential work out of personal Gemini sessions.
Discussion angle
Which workflows should move from consumer AI chat to API or enterprise terms, and what internal rule should the group set for pasting confidential code or customer data into AI chat tools?