Customer Emails and Privacy When Using AI Tools

A customer email usually holds personal details. A name, an address, an order, sometimes health or money details. Connect an AI tool to the inbox and that tool can read all of it. Find out what it does with the data first. Ask before you connect, not after. Once the mail has gone to a maker's servers, you can't easily call it back.

What the regulator says

Laws on customer data vary by country, and this page can't tell you which apply to you. Australia's regulator, the OAIC, has published guidance on AI products. The UK has the Information Commissioner's Office, and other places have their own bodies. Start with the website of whichever one covers you.

The OAIC's advice is to keep personal details, sensitive ones above all, out of public generative AI tools.¹ A free public chatbot is the clearest example. Pasting a customer's email into one is not the same as using a business tool under a contract.

It also says a product shouldn't be adopted just because it exists.¹ If a filter or a folder does the job, you may not need to share customer data with an AI tool at all.

Questions to ask about any tool

The OAIC suggests finding out who will have access to personal information that goes into the product or comes out of it.¹ In plain terms, ask the maker:

• Who can see the messages, the maker's staff or only you?
• Are customer emails used to train the AI? Look for the answer in writing.
• Where is the data stored, and for how long?
• Can you delete it, and can you turn the tool off for some mailboxes?
• Does the tool see the whole inbox or only the messages you choose?

Some makers answer part of this on their plan pages. Google's pricing page says, beside its Gemini chat, that company data is not used to train models.² Read that as a statement about that product and plan. A different plan or tool may say something else, so check the one you're buying.

Microsoft says you can use the Microsoft Copilot app to read and act on emails in shared mailboxes and delegate mailboxes.³ On a shared inbox, find out which staff can ask the tool about it.

Free tools versus business plans

Practical habits

• Hold back messages about health, money, legal trouble or children unless you've read the maker's terms and your local rules.
• Strip out names, account numbers and addresses before pasting into an outside tool.
• Name the tools staff may use. One that somebody joined alone is the hardest to track.
• Revisit the choice now and then. The OAIC advises planning how human oversight will work.¹
• Look up what local law says you must tell customers about AI use.

Tools that may already be part of your email plan are listed in the built-in tools note. The first note in this set has the big picture.