Frequently Asked Questions

On the consumer tiers most small businesses use (Free and Plus), yes by default, unless you turn it off in data controls. Paid Team and Enterprise tiers are excluded from training. The bigger risk is staff using personal accounts for work, which puts your data on the training-by-default tier. Private, local AI removes the question entirely, because your data never leaves your machine.

Yes. A private, local AI application runs on hardware you own, so your data, your files, and your decision reasoning never leave your building. This is different from a cloud chatbot, where your inputs are transmitted, processed, and often retained. Local AI is the fit for any business handling confidential client or customer information.

A public AI chatbot is a poor fit for privileged or confidential client information, because consumer tiers may use inputs to train models and may allow human review. A private, on-premise AI keeps privileged material on a machine the firm controls, with a logged, explainable record of what it did. For law firms, the safe path is owning the AI, not renting a shared cloud tool.

Consumer AI chatbots are not appropriate for protected health information, and their consumer terms are not covered by a HIPAA business associate agreement. A private, local AI keeps patient data inside the practice, on hardware the practice owns, which is the cleanest way to avoid exposing PHI to a third-party cloud. Always confirm your specific compliance setup with your own advisor.

An MSP can deploy private, local AI for each client so that every client's data stays on that client's own hardware, never pooled in a shared cloud. This lets the MSP add an AI service line while keeping the data-security promise their clients expect. Dr. Data partners with MSPs on private, per-client AI builds.

Private AI is an application that runs on hardware you own, built to do a specific job for your business, with your data staying local. ChatGPT is a general cloud chatbot that runs on someone else's servers and, on consumer tiers, may train on what you type. Private AI is owned; a cloud chatbot is rented.

Custom private AI is built as a one-time owned asset, not a per-seat monthly rental, so a small business buys it once and owns it. Costs scale with how many jobs and capabilities you add over time. There is no recurring per-user fee for the software itself.

Yes. Job-specific AI is built around the actual work of your trade, using your own job history and pricing rules, so a bidding tool reads your past jobs and a lead tool watches local permits filtered to your radius. It is built for the trade, not a generic chat window. The value comes from the four fields that matter to your trade, not two hundred generic ones.

No. Private AI handles repetitive work like drafting quotes, scoring leads, or prepping client notes, so your team spends time on judgment calls and customer relationships. You keep the decisions; the AI handles the repeatable steps that eat hours.

You keep it. Dr. Data builds owned software on your hardware, not a rented subscription. If you part ways, your application, your data, and your trained models stay on your machine.

Yes. Each private AI app is built for one job first, like lead intelligence or on-site quoting, and you can add more over time as your business grows. Because everything runs on your own hardware, new tools connect to the same local data without starting over in the cloud.