According to a new study by Surfshark, many popular AI chatbots track user data and collect their information to share it with third parties. The study also added that a lot of popular AI chatbots on Apple App Store gather the personal data of users, with 30% of them sharing that data with third parties. Data collected by third-parties is then used for targeting advertisements and can even be forwarded to data brokers. The privacy guidelines on Apple’s App Store shows 35 types of data an app can collect from the users. The AI chatbots on the App Store collect about 11 types of data from users on average.
Out of all the AI chatbots on the App Store, Google’s Gemini is most data hungry and collects 22 types of data from the users and it also includes knowing users’ exact location. Contact information, phone number, browsing and search history, email address and name are some types of data that Gemini collects as well. It is followed by Poe which collects 14 types of data and Claude which collects 13 types of data from users. 12 types of data are collected by Microsoft’s CoPilot. Chinese AI chatbot DeepSeek collects 11 types of data and user information is stored at servers in China. Perplexity also only collects 10 types of data from its users.
On the other hand, ChatGPT only collects 10 types of data and doesn't share user data with any third-parties. ChatGPT only collects data that is needed for the chat but users should still look at its privacy policy to know more about their privacy on the app. The AI chatbots on the App Store that collect the least amount of user data are Grok (7), Pi (5) and Jasper (5). Byt data from these apps can still be used for advertising purposes or be sold to data brokers.
Read next: Governments Have Access! The Terrifying Reality of AI Data Collection by ChatGPT and DeepSeek
Out of all the AI chatbots on the App Store, Google’s Gemini is most data hungry and collects 22 types of data from the users and it also includes knowing users’ exact location. Contact information, phone number, browsing and search history, email address and name are some types of data that Gemini collects as well. It is followed by Poe which collects 14 types of data and Claude which collects 13 types of data from users. 12 types of data are collected by Microsoft’s CoPilot. Chinese AI chatbot DeepSeek collects 11 types of data and user information is stored at servers in China. Perplexity also only collects 10 types of data from its users.
On the other hand, ChatGPT only collects 10 types of data and doesn't share user data with any third-parties. ChatGPT only collects data that is needed for the chat but users should still look at its privacy policy to know more about their privacy on the app. The AI chatbots on the App Store that collect the least amount of user data are Grok (7), Pi (5) and Jasper (5). Byt data from these apps can still be used for advertising purposes or be sold to data brokers.
Read next: Governments Have Access! The Terrifying Reality of AI Data Collection by ChatGPT and DeepSeek
