Question about IP ownership, model training & user privacy

General
1

Hi everyone,

I’m currently building a private AI agent on Pickaxe using my own system instructions, proprietary educational content, and a custom knowledge base. I’m preparing a small pilot with registered users and I’m still waiting for an email reply from Pickaxe, so I wanted to ask here as well.

Does anyone know how Pickaxe handles intellectual property, model training, and privacy of user conversations?

Specifically, I’d like to know:

  • Do I keep full ownership of my uploaded prompts, documents, and knowledge base?
  • Are system prompts, uploaded files, or user conversations ever used for training or improving models?
  • Which third-party AI providers receive this data?
  • If I turn off “Collect user information,” are user conversations only hidden from me as the builder, or are they also protected from Pickaxe staff / internal access?
  • Is there a DPA available for users working with EU customers or personal data?

I’d really appreciate any official clarification or links to the relevant terms or documentation.

Thank you!

2

Hi there! I’ve just responded to your email, but I want to follow up here too in case anyone else has similar questions. For all of these points, you can learn more in our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy!

  • You do have full ownership of your prompts, as well as any uploaded documents.
  • Pickaxe will never train models on your prompts, or on the data you upload to the knowledge base. We do reserve the right to train models based on user interactions with Forms or Chatbots - however, if you are a Pro customer, you automatically opt out of this policy, and user interactions cannot be used for training purposes.
  • The third-party AI provider that receives your data is entirely dependent on the model you select
  • Turning off “Collect user information” hides conversations and user memories from you. These are still stored on our backend for functionality (user memories, for example, are still being used even while hidden), but they are marked as private and staff cannot access this information without explicit permission from the user.
  • Pickaxe is GDPR compliant (as well as SOC II compliant!), and Pickaxe users generally make use of our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy as our DPA. However, users on Business Plans can create custom DPAs with us as needed.

I hope that’s helpful!