Privacy policies on top LLMs take over 20 minutes to read, so perhaps it no wonder people are signing their lives over to ChatGPT and others

Date:
Wed, 23 Sep 2026 17:05:00 +0000

Description:
Technical and legal jargon make privacy policies for LLMs and their chatbots almost unreadable for most people.

FULL STORY ======================================================================Copy link Facebook X Whatsapp Reddit Pinterest Flipboard Threads Email Share this article 0 Join the conversation Follow us Add us as a preferred source on Google Newsletter Subscribe to our newsletter Privacy policies are famously difficult to read, and in the world of LLMs, theyre impenetrable and long The policy for Metas Muse Spark is over 14,000 words long, taking almost an hour to read Cybersecurity firm Bridewell carried out the study, assessing the privacy policies of 20 popular LLMs When you input data into an AI chatbot , you expect it to interpret and process the words or numbers to save you time. But what is it doing with that data? You can check the privacy policy to find out assuming, that is, that you have the time to do so.

A new study has found that the average time it takes to read a privacy policy for an LLM is 20 minutes and some are a much longer read. With around 75% of people admitting to using an AI chatbot at least once a month, understanding where the questions and data queries are going and how they are used is increasingly important. Latest Videos From TechRadar Watch full video here: Ease of reading Privacy policies provide that understanding, but are they
easy to read? A study by Bridewells cyber security experts suggests not, with many having a poor Fleisch Reading Ease Score, meaning that in laymans terms, these documents are pretty impenetrable.

Bridewells study assessed privacy policies from 20 large language models (LLMs), and found that the average length of time to read one is 20 minutes. The average word count is 4,603, but the real challenge is understanding the information. You may like Meta Muse could read your private messages without permission, report finds 'The chicification of surveillance is deeply concerning' why our tech is getting far too close (and what you can do about it) Heavy AI usage has plummeted 31% in the past year, according to new
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The Flesch Reading Ease Score is a measure of readability devised by Rudolf Flesch in 1948, and is widely used to score texts. A score over 60 is good, whereas a score below that is not. The average Flesch score for these privacy policies is 40.2, suggesting a degree of jargon-based density that most
people will not understand.

How, then, might the general public safely use an LLM chatbot like ChatGPT or Google Gemini while in full knowledge of how the information they input is being used? Are you a pro? Subscribe to our newsletter Sign up to the TechRadar Pro newsletter to get all the top news, opinion, features and guidance your business needs to succeed! Contact me with news and offers from other Future brands Receive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners
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Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over. Training on inputs In evaluating the LLMs, Bridewell found that 13 of the 20 use inputs and outputs to train their models. Some LLMs offer the option to opt out of training, but others do not. Even where an opt out is possible, it isnt always clear how to action it.

Its essential for users to fully understand how their data is being processed by LLMs, and businesses need clear internal guidance on what can and can't be shared, and ideally proper enterprise accounts with the right protections in place," noted Chris Linnell, Associate Director of Data Privacy at Bridewell, "employees may be at risk of sharing highly sensitive or confidential information that may end up being used to train LLMs.

There isnt just a personal risk from data input into an AI. Employees need to be aware of how they are using the technology for work.

As a rule of thumb, the more complex the LLM (e.g., Meta's Muse Spark, or Moonshot AIs Kimi K), the longer the privacy policy takes to read. Follow TechRadar on Google News and add us as a preferred source to get our expert news, reviews, and opinion in your feeds.



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Link to news story: https://www.techradar.com/pro/privacy-policies-on-top-llms-take-over-20-minute s-to-read-so-perhaps-it-no-wonder-people-are-signing-their-lives-over-to-chatg pt-and-others


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