What Not to Paste Into an AI Tool

Why this matters

The paste is the moment a shop's private information leaves the building, and it happens in a second, from a person trying to save ten minutes on follow-up emails. A gate code, a card number a tech typed into a job note, or a line about a customer's dialysis schedule is now in a system you do not run, under terms you probably have not read, and in most tools there is no reliable way to pull it back. This card names the categories that should never go in, why each one is dangerous, and what to paste instead so the tool still does its job. The written rule your staff follow lives in The Shop AI Use Policy SOP; this card is the reasoning behind it.

What happens to text after you paste it

Before the categories, the mechanics, described generically because providers change them often. As of 2026, depending on the provider and the plan, pasted text may be:

• Kept in your chat history until you delete it, visible to anyone who can sign in to that account.
• Retained by the provider for a period after you delete it, commonly for abuse and safety monitoring, so deleting the chat is not the same as the provider deleting the text.
• Used to train future models, typically by default on consumer plans and off by default on business plans, with a setting that controls it.
• Read by a person at the provider in limited cases, such as a flagged conversation or a support review.
• Visible to a workspace administrator on a business plan, which matters when the administrator is not the person who pasted.

None of that is sinister; it is how these services run. It does mean the safe assumption is that anything pasted is stored outside your control for longer than you meant. Re-check the provider's data-use page whenever its terms change, which for most of them is more than once a year.

The six categories that stay out

Why payment data first. Card rules come from the payment card industry's security standard, PCI DSS, which binds your business through your merchant agreement with your processor rather than as a statute, and it forbids storing the card security code after authorization at all. A tech who typed a full card number into a job note has already created a problem in your field software; pasting that note moves the number into a second system outside anything your processor would recognize as compliant. Bank account numbers carry the same logic, and a shop that extends its own consumer financing may also fall under the FTC's Safeguards Rule (16 CFR Part 314), a question for your accountant or attorney.

Why access codes, when no law names them. They are the category most often pasted by accident, because techs write them into the notes field precisely so the next tech can get in. The harm needs no statute: the customer gave you the code in trust, and the paste puts it, with their address, somewhere they did not agree to.

Why health details, when HIPAA does not apply. HIPAA reaches health plans, most health care providers and their business associates; a plumbing or HVAC shop learning that a customer is on oxygen is generally none of those. State law has filled the gap unevenly. Washington's My Health My Data Act (2023) defines consumer health data broadly, reaches businesses outside health care and gives consumers a right to sue, and Nevada and Connecticut have since added health-data provisions of their own. Most states have no such rule, which is why this one varies more than any other category: check your own state's.

Why employee records. Under the federal floor, the ADA requires an employer of 15 or more to keep employee medical information confidential and in files separate from the personnel record (29 CFR 1630.14). Every state's data-breach statute treats a name together with a Social Security number as protected personal information. A disciplinary note is not regulated the same way, but it is the document most likely to surface later in a dispute, and its whereabouts will be asked about.

Why confidential client material. Whether pasting a commercial client's documents into a third-party service breaches a confidentiality clause depends on the clause's wording and the governing state's contract law, a question for your own attorney. The operational fact is simpler: if the contract says "confidential", treat the AI tool as a third party, because the clause almost certainly does.

The settings that change the risk, explained generically

Every serious provider offers some version of these controls. Know which you have before anyone pastes anything:

• Training use. A setting, or a plan-level term, that says whether your conversations may improve future models. On, your text may be learned from in aggregate. Off, it is not, though it is still stored.
• History and retention. Whether chats are kept, for how long, and whether deleting removes the provider's copy or only yours.
• Business terms. Business plans usually come with a contract stating the provider will not train on your data, and sometimes a data processing agreement, a contract that governs how a vendor handles personal information on your behalf. These terms, not the marketing page, are what you can rely on.
• Connectors. Features that let the tool read your email, files or field software directly. A connector is a standing paste: it removes the moment where a person decides what goes in.
• Shared accounts. One login for the whole office means everyone's pastes are visible to everyone, and nobody can say who pasted what.

Training off does not make a category safe. It removes one route, not storage, not human review, and not the person at the next desk on a shared login.

The state privacy layer

There is no comprehensive federal consumer privacy statute as of 2026. The federal layer that does reach a small shop is the FTC Act's ban on deceptive practices, which turns your own privacy promise into an obligation: if your website says customer information is never shared with third parties, a paste into an AI tool may contradict it. See related: The Customer Privacy Promise When You Use AI.

On top of that sit around twenty state comprehensive privacy laws, each gated by thresholds. California's applies to businesses above an annual revenue figure that is indexed, or that handle the personal information of 100,000 or more consumers or households, among other triggers, so many small shops fall outside it. Thresholds differ by state, and a few states apply some sensitive-data duties to businesses below them, so read your own state's statute rather than assuming you are too small. Whether a paste counts as a "breach" under your state's notification law is fact-specific and belongs with your attorney. This is not legal advice.

Worked example: the Friday follow-up paste

An office manager wants a general-purpose chat assistant to draft follow-up messages for the week's 38 completed jobs, and is about to paste the 38 tech notes in one block. Run the scrub first.

Scan. Searching the block for digit runs, and for the words code, gate, lock, alarm, password, oxygen, medical and the shop's commercial client names, finds 11 items in 9 notes:

• 5 access codes: 3 gate, 1 lockbox, 1 alarm.
• 1 full card number, typed by a tech who took payment over the phone at the door.
• 3 health mentions: an oxygen concentrator, a wheelchair ramp "for her husband after the stroke", and a pregnancy.
• 2 notes from a property-management client whose service agreement carries a confidentiality clause.

5 + 1 + 3 + 2 = 11.

Decide each.

• Codes: replaced with [CODE]. A follow-up message never needs one.
• The card number: removed from the paste, and that is not the end of it. It is deleted from the job note in the field software, the tech is shown where card details belong, and the owner is told, because it was sitting in the system before anyone thought about AI.
• Health: the oxygen line becomes "occupant uses medical equipment"; the stroke and the pregnancy come out entirely, since neither changes the message.
• The property-management notes: both removed from the paste, not anonymised. The clause covers the client's information whatever is done to the names, and two follow-ups are quicker to write by hand than the contract is to read.
• Names: each becomes [NAME], merged back into the drafts afterwards.

Result. 36 notes pasted, about 15 minutes of scrubbing, and the drafts were as useful as an unscrubbed paste would have produced, because none of the removed facts was something a follow-up message needed. That is the usual finding: what is dangerous to paste is almost never what the task required.

What changes the answer. If the task had been "summarize which customers need priority scheduling this winter", the medical-equipment flag would have been the point of the task. The answer then is not to paste the diagnosis but to do that sort inside the field software, where the information already lives under the shop's own controls.

What is fine to paste

Most of what makes these tools useful carries none of the six categories: your own procedures and checklists, service descriptions, a generic description of a job ("two-story house, attic air handler, condensate overflow"), a scrubbed note, your own draft writing, and published manufacturer material, which raises copyright questions but not privacy ones. Your own pricing and margins are a business-confidentiality call, not a legal one. Decide it once, write it into the policy, and stop deciding it at every paste.

References

• PCI Security Standards Council, PCI DSS, binding through your merchant agreement
• 29 CFR 1630.14, ADA confidentiality of employee medical information
• 16 CFR Part 314, FTC Safeguards Rule, for shops that extend consumer financing
• See related: The Shop AI Use Policy SOP
• See related: The Customer Privacy Promise When You Use AI