Set Up Your AI Accounts the Right Way: Your Data and Training Opt-Outs

The privacy lesson you just read is about your students’ information. This one is about yours: the account you sign in with, what the company may do with your conversations, and the three settings that decide it. Ten minutes here, once, and every tool in the rest of this course starts from a safer place.

Rule 1: Use a School Account When You Have One

Every major vendor now offers a school-managed version, and all of them make the same promise: your conversations are not used to train the models by default, and an administrator controls the settings.

A personal account is fine for learning the tools, and this course works on the free tiers. But the moment you are working with real school materials, a school account gives you protections a personal one does not.

Rule 2: On a Personal Account, Set the Training Switch Yourself

On personal plans the vendors may use your conversations to improve their models unless you say otherwise. Each one has a single switch (checked October 2026; the menus move, the idea does not):

• ChatGPT (Free, Go, Plus, Pro): profile icon, then Settings > Data Controls, and turn off “Improve the model for everyone.” New conversations are then not used for training. A Temporary chat is never used for training and does not create memories.
• Gemini (personal Google Account): Settings & help > Activity, then turn Keep Activity off (or “Turn off and delete activity”). With it off, your future chats are not reviewed to improve Google’s services or used to improve its AI models, though Google still keeps them for 72 hours to respond to you and for safety. The trade-off: Gemini skills (Lesson 4) require Keep Activity to be on, and it is on by default if you are 18 or over. Decide which matters more to you, or keep two accounts.
• Claude (Free, Pro, Max): Settings > Privacy, and switch off “Help improve our AI models.” Off means your chats are not used for training and are kept 30 days; on extends retention to up to five years in de-identified form. An incognito chat is never used for training either way.

Why this matters for a teacher: you will paste lesson plans, rubrics and drafts into these tools every week. Turning the switch off costs you nothing in quality. Leaving it on means your materials may become training data.

Rule 3: Lock the Door

• Turn on two-step verification (also called two-factor authentication) on every AI account, exactly as you would for your email. A stolen AI account exposes everything you ever uploaded.
• Use a strong, unique password, ideally from a password manager; never reuse your school password on a personal AI account.
• Review connected apps once a semester. Projects, plugins, skills and connectors can reach your Drive, email or calendar; remove the ones you no longer use (ChatGPT: Settings > Apps; Claude: Customize > Connectors; Gemini: Settings > Connected apps).
• Know the age rules before you share a tool with anyone else: Claude accounts are for adults (18 and over); Gemini skills require 18 and over; Copilot Chat is not available under 13; and district accounts for students follow your administrator’s settings.

Which Account for Which Task

Quick Practice: The Three Switches

Open the AI tool you use most. Find the training setting from the list above and set it the way you want it. Then turn on two-step verification. Finally, if you are eligible for ChatGPT for Teachers or Claude for Teachers, start the verification today; it takes a few minutes and moves your school work under education terms.

Wrap-Up

Three rules: sign in with a school account when you have one, set the training switch yourself on personal accounts, and lock the door with two-step verification. With your own data handled, the privacy habit for student data from the previous topic completes the picture, and you can use everything that follows with confidence.

Updated: October 2026