What not to paste into an AI tool: customer, driver and load data

Most of what an AI tool needs from you is wording. Most of what a freight office holds is other people's details. The trick is to keep those two apart.

When you paste text into a chat tool, it leaves your computer. What happens next depends on the maker and your plan. Two makers' help pages show how different the answers can be.

What the makers say

OpenAI's help page says its individual services may use your content to train its models¹. It also says temporary chats aren't used to improve its models while they stay temporary¹. For business, enterprise and API products, the page says inputs and outputs aren't used for that by default¹.

Google's Gemini privacy page says human reviewers, including some from its service providers, read part of the data it collects². It asks users to keep confidential information out if they wouldn't want a reviewer to see it².

Both pages were checked on 11 November 2026¹², and both are likely to change. Read the current page for the exact plan you use. If staff use their own personal accounts, assume you can't see or control the settings.

Details that are risky in a freight office

Think about who the details belong to. Some belong to your customers, some to your drivers, some to the customer's customers.

About people

• Names, mobile numbers, home and email addresses.
• Signatures on dockets and photos of them.
• Driver licence details, medical or fitness information, pay, and anything about hours or incidents.
• Photos of people, or anything that identifies a driver's whereabouts in real time.

About the load and the business

• Full pickup and delivery addresses, especially private homes.
• Gate codes, alarm codes, key-safe numbers and after-hours access notes.
• What's in a load, when a high-value load moves, and where it's parked.
• Customer rate cards, contract terms and account numbers.
• Bank details and payment information.
• Login details for any system. Never.

A tool doesn't need most of these to draft a good email. "Contact A at the pickup site" reads as well as the real name.

Replace, then restore

Before pasting, swap real details for plain labels such as "Customer A", "Driver One", "Pickup site" or "Reference X". Ask the tool to use the labels. When the draft comes back, put the real details in yourself from your own records.

This also helps with accuracy. You have to look at each detail when you put it back, and that's the check these pages keep asking for.

Your tool's settings

Look for a setting about whether your chats help train the maker's models, and whether the tool keeps history. Switch off what you can. Know that settings can change when the maker updates its terms, and that feedback buttons may have their own rules, as OpenAI's page notes¹.

Compare the plan you actually use with the maker's page, not with a sales claim. This site doesn't recommend any tool.

Where the privacy rules are

Privacy law differs by country, and sometimes by state. This site can't say whether your office meets it. Only the official bodies can:

• Australia: the OAIC, the national privacy regulator, is the place to ask how the rules reach a business your size.
• United Kingdom: the ICO runs a guidance page on AI and data protection. One chapter asks, "How should we assess security and data minimisation in AI?"³. The page says it's under review.
• United States: the FTC is a good first stop. Your state may add rules of its own.

Customer contracts may add their own rules. Some customers forbid sharing their data with outside services, and some freight work, such as government or dangerous goods, has stricter terms. Read your agreements.

Tell your staff

Write down, in a few lines, what may and may not go into a tool. Cover which tool, which account, and the stand-in labels. Put it where staff will see it. An unwritten rule gets forgotten the first busy afternoon.

If something personal gets pasted by mistake, say so early. Write down what was shared and when. Then ask your country's regulator what, if anything, you owe the people concerned.