Are Character.AI chats private? Who can read them, as of October 2026

The Morse teamPublished October 25, 20267 min read

As of October 2026, Character.AI chats are private from other users and from the people who create the characters, but not from Character.AI itself, which stores your chats on its servers, may review them, and uses them to train its models. Its terms say it "may access, review, screen, edit, modify and delete your content at any time and for any reason," and its privacy policy lets it hand chats to a court, a buyer, or its vendors.

We read Character.AI's privacy policy (effective July 1, 2026), its regional privacy disclosures, its terms of service (last updated August 27, 2025), its Safety Center, and its help center articles on creators, training, age assurance, Parental Insights, export, and deletion on October 20, 2026. Character.AI earns credit for its age checks, which run through Persona: it says it never sees the selfie or ID you submit.

Character.AI privacy at a glance

Can Character.AI staff see your chats?

Yes, they can. Character.AI's terms say that "while we're not required to do so, we may access, review, screen, edit, modify and delete your content at any time and for any reason, including to provide and develop the Services" (Character.AI terms).

The Safety Center describes who does the reviewing. Character.AI's Trust & Safety team works "around the clock" on "flagged and reported content," and it includes "internal personnel as well as contracted moderators" (Safety Center). The privacy policy also lets Character.AI disclose information to "employees, consultants, service providers, and other vendors," naming "content moderation" among their jobs (privacy policy).

Character.AI doesn't say how often anyone opens an ordinary chat. Its help center does answer one Reddit worry directly: when a character talks like a real person, "You are still talking to the Character," and no one is spectating (Character.AI help).

Can a character's creator read your chats?

No. Character.AI's help center says, "Creators can never see the conversations that you have with their Characters" (Character.AI help).

Creators do see numbers. Creator Insights, a private dashboard, shows each creator "New Interactions," defined as "the total number of messages your Characters received from users," along with likes, followers, and discoveries, updated every 24 hours (Creator Insights). Your messages count toward that total, but their text doesn't appear.

Other users see a chat only if you post it. The mobile Community Feed lets you share "Chat Snippets," which it calls "slices of conversation" (Community Feed), and Character.AI may keep a character you made public active even after you delete your account (privacy policy).

Who can see what on Character.AI

Each row comes from Character.AI's own pages, read October 20, 2026.

Does Character.AI train on your chats?

Yes. Its privacy policy lists "to train our artificial intelligence/machine learning models" among the uses of what it collects, including "chat communications" (privacy policy). The same list of what it collects includes "recordings of your voice, if you chose to use certain voice features" (privacy policy). Before training, it says it disassociates content from "the user's account information" and removes "directly identifiable information" (regional disclosures).

Character.AI's opt-out has a gap. Its regional disclosures, effective July 1, 2026, say "you have the right to opt out at any time," but the help article they link gives the steps only "if you are in the European Economic Area ("EEA") or the United Kingdom ("UK")." There, the switch is Improve the Model for Everyone under Settings (Character.AI help), and which AI companies train on your data has the steps. Opting out covers only "new content," and your data may still improve "search, recommendations, and safety classifiers."

How long does Character.AI keep your chats?

As long as it decides it needs them. The privacy policy says it keeps information "for the time necessary for the purposes for which it is processed," and may keep it longer "to comply with our legal obligations, resolve disputes, and enforce our agreements" (privacy policy). It publishes no number of days.

Character.AI's deletion article covers the whole account, and deleting it "is permanent and cannot be reversed." On the web it's under Profile Settings, Account, Manage Account & Data, Delete Account (Character.AI help). Export first if you want a copy: Character.AI says exports "can take 3-4 weeks," and the emailed link expires after 7 days (Character.AI help). The license you gave outlives the account. The terms call it "perpetual, irrevocable" and let Character.AI pass it to "others with whom we have contractual relationships" (terms).

Character.AI filed for Chapter 11 on October 12, 2026 to run "a court-supervised sale of the company" (Character.AI), and its privacy policy lets it disclose information in a "sale of company assets" (privacy policy). Stored chats can also be subpoenaed, which we cover in can AI chats be subpoenaed.

Is Character.AI safe for teens, and what does age assurance collect?

Character.AI ended open-ended chat for users under 18 by November 25, 2025 (Character.AI help). As of October 2026, "all users are required to complete an age assurance check," and anyone verified as under 18 is put in "reading mode," where "chat with characters is not available" (What is Age Assurance?).

Signing in takes no password: you use Google, Apple, or an emailed link (Character.AI help). The check starts without you. Character.AI looks at "login info, activity on the platform, and some signals from third parties." If those suggest you're under 18 and you aren't, you take a selfie with Persona, and Persona asks for a government ID "only as a final step" (Age Assurance FAQ). Character.AI says it "does not have access to your submissions at any point," and Persona deletes biometric data and IDs "within 7 days" (Character.AI help).

Parental Insights shows a parent time, not text. A teen can invite a trusted adult, who then sees "only the teen's screentime," not "messages, in-app content, or other activity." Screentime is tracked from the day the account is set up (Parental Insights FAQ).

How Morse keeps your character chats on your device

Your Character.AI chats sit on Character.AI's servers, under a license that never ends, and that's what lets staff review them, models learn from them, and a court or a buyer reach them. Morse is built so your chats don't sit on ours.

Characters, Morse's roleplay and companion chats, keeps your character chats, the characters you make, and your personas in your browser, encrypted. Our servers don't keep messages or log message content, so there's no store of your roleplay for a moderator or a training run. Morse doesn't train AI on your content, sell your data, or show ads, so there's no Improve the Model for Everyone switch to look for in any country. Morse is for adults only, and when a message in a character chat reads like suicidal thinking, crisis lines appear, checked on your device.

In Chat, each conversation runs in a privacy mode you pick:

• E2EE, for the conversations you'd never want reviewed. Your browser checks the enclave's proof that it's genuine, then encrypts the message so only that enclave can read it, and our servers relay ciphertext they can't read. The enclaves are run by third-party providers, not by Morse, and the protection rests on the enclave hardware and attestation working as designed.
• Private, the default, so no host keeps a transcript. Morse has zero data retention agreements with its inference, search, and other providers, so they keep nothing.
• Anonymous, for GPT, Claude, or Gemini without the provider knowing it's you. Our proxy strips your account, email, and IP address; the provider may keep the message for a limited time to check for abuse, under its own policy.

Because we don't store chats, we usually have very little to give if the law asks. Your history is stored only in your browser, so clearing your browser, losing the device, or deleting your account deletes your chats, and Morse can't recover them; keep a copy of any story you care about. The Morse privacy policy has the details, our Character AI alternatives guide compares other companion apps, and are AI chats private covers ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini.

You can bring your Character.AI characters, chats, and personas with you through Morse's free importer, whose exporter runs only in your browser, then start free: the Free plan has no cap on character messages.