Blog · Privacy
Will AI Train on My Business Data? 7 Questions to Ask Any AI Vendor
Every AI tool you add sees part of your business: customer names, job notes, prices, emails. Most owners never ask what happens to it afterwards. You should, and the questions are simpler than the industry makes them sound.
Why this matters for a small business
Your customer list, your pricing and your notes are part of what your business is worth. When software says it uses your data “to improve the service”, that can mean your content helps train an AI model that other companies use. Many AI providers offer a setting or a business plan where training is off. The point is to know which one your vendor is on.
Seven questions to ask
1. Is my content used to train AI models?
Ask about the vendor and the AI provider they use underneath. You want a plain yes or no, not “we take privacy seriously”.
2. If not, what makes that true?
A setting on their AI account, a contract term, or just a policy they could change next month? Ask where it is written down.
3. What does the AI actually see, and when?
A good answer: only what it needs to do the task you asked for, at the time you ask.
4. Is my data kept apart from other customers?
Ask whether each business has its own separate store, or whether everyone shares one database with a label on each row.
5. Who on your team can see my data, and is it logged?
Support staff sometimes need access to help you. You should be able to find out when they did, and why.
6. How long do you keep it, and can I have it deleted?
Look for real time limits and a real deletion process, not “as long as necessary”.
7. Is it in your privacy policy?
If a promise isn’t written in the policy, it isn’t really a promise.
Bring your own list of questions.
On a free call we will answer each one plainly and show you where the answer is written down.
Red flags
- “We may use your data to improve our services”, with no way to turn it off.
- Answers that change depending on who you ask.
- No privacy policy, or one that never mentions AI.
- A free tool with no business plan. If you aren’t paying, ask what the product is.
How we answer them for SMB Automate
- No. What the AI sees is not used by us or the AI provider to train their models.
- The AI account SMB Automate runs on has model training turned off, and the commitment is in our privacy policy.
- Your content is sent only to produce the draft or answer you asked for.
- Each business gets its own separate data store and its own knowledge base.
- Every time our team signs into a client app is logged, and you can ask for the record.
- Our privacy policy sets out how long information is kept and how to have your account and data deleted. Location points from on-shift route tracking, for example, are deleted after 90 days.
- Yes. See the AI processing section of our privacy policy, and our trust page for the plain-language version.