AI companion privacy: what to check before you share

Chiu and Foote's interview study describes users balancing the comfort of a nonjudgmental companion with concerns about the platform behind it. Some participants felt uncertain about control over their data. The small qualitative sample helps explain a privacy tension; it cannot establish how every companion user thinks or how securely any app operates. [2]

Replika's policy offers a useful example of why precise wording matters. It says conversation data is sent to third-party language-model providers to generate responses, with de-identification and data minimization measures. It also says those providers are contractually prohibited from training their own models on that data. These are the company's published terms, rather than an independent audit of compliance. [1]

The same policy says conversation contents are not used for marketing or advertising. Separately, it describes internally using anonymized portions of messages for service and safety improvements. Its retention section also distinguishes message-related records from account and financial records. A short slogan about privacy would miss those differences. [1]

Spicy's takeBefore sharing something intimate, find the current policy and its deletion instructions. Check whether your concern is advertising, access by service providers, training, or keeping a record after account closure. If you cannot find a clear answer, keep that detail out of the conversation for now. The chemistry can wait for the small print. [2][1]