ChatGPT may be training on your business chats right now. One setting decides it, and almost nobody has opened the page it lives on.
I talk to groups about AI a lot. When I pull this setting up on the screen, a good part of the room has never seen it. These are people who paste client names, deal terms and private notes into ChatGPT every day.
The default
On the Free, Plus and Pro plans, OpenAI says it may use your content to train its models. You can opt out. You just have to do it yourself.
Where the switch is
Click your profile icon, then Settings, then Data controls. Turn off Improve the model for everyone.
ChatGPT works the same afterward. From then on, OpenAI says your new conversations won't be used to improve its models. Their word is new, so treat it as a going-forward switch.
If you'd rather do it outside the app, OpenAI's Privacy Portal has a Do not train on my content option. Either one is enough, you don't need both.
The catch
Feedback counts. If you hit thumbs up or thumbs down on an answer, OpenAI says the entire conversation tied to that feedback may be used to train its models, even after you opt out.
So if a chat has anything sensitive in it, don't rate it.
Temporary Chat is the safer lane for that kind of work. OpenAI says temporary chats aren't used to improve its models while they stay temporary, and they never show up in your history. Save one and it becomes a regular chat that follows your normal settings. I covered Temporary Chat, and Claude's incognito mode, in another episode of this series.
Who is safe
Business, Enterprise and Edu plans, plus the API, are not used to train OpenAI's models by default. On those plans a thumbs up or down doesn't open the conversation to training either.
My own work account is on Business, and you can see it right on the Data controls page. The switch is grayed out, and the note under it says OpenAI does not use data from that workspace to train its models.
If clients are in the chat, pay for the right tier.
Not sure where you stand?
Take the free AI readiness quiz: https://quiz.techtony.co/ai-readiness
Sources (checked October 20, 2026. These pages change, so check them before you rely on them):