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AI Chatbots and GDPR Compliance

Learn how to make your AI chatbot GDPR compliant: Essential requirements, best practices, and implementation guide for chatbot data protection under EU law
Last edited: 2/18/2025
A yellow lock in the center of the EU flag, surrounded by stars and a single bubble looks like a robot representing chatbots

As technology advances, the top concern stays the same: data privacy and security. Technology thrives on the knowledge of everything including people, and while that makes it powerful, it also raises a few questions:

The European Union has long had data protection regulations, but in 2016 they overhauled their approach with GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) to better protect the rights of citizens in the digital world.

So does GDPR requirements apply to your chatbots? Yes! Your chatbots also need to comply with GDPR, provided you do business with EU/EEA citizens involved.

What is GDPR? And why does it apply to your chatbots?

GDPR is an EU Regulation focused on data protection and privacy. Its purpose is to ensure that the collected personal data is handled securely and to prevent any use that might happen without consent of the individual. With this regulation, EU/EEA citizens have full control over their information.

GDPR applicability is determined by two main factors. The regulation applies to your business if either:

  1. Your company is based in the European Union, OR
  2. Your business collects or processes personal data from individuals located in the EU, regardless of your company's location

If you do not comply to GDPR despite meeting these criteria, it can result in severe consequences, including substantial fines(millions or billions of euros depending on the penalty), criminal charges, or a combination of both and more, as outlined in the official text of the GDPR.

GDPR Requirements for Chatbots

The GDPR provides a set of what it calls principles that need to be fulfilled by your chatbots. These principles and requirements form the legal rules you need to follow to be compliant with GDPR.

Here are the most relevant principles and requirements for your chatbots:

1. Lawfulness, Fairness, and Transparency

Information that you provide to the public or your users must be easily accessible and use clear, plain language. Processing must be lawful, fair, and transparent to the data subject. You must not hide any aspect of what you're doing, especially regarding their data processing activities.

Your chatbot must clearly inform users that they're interacting with an AI, explain how their conversation data is processed before collecting any personal information. The chatbot's privacy policy should be easily accessible and written in clear language.

2. Purpose Limitation

Personal data must be collected for specified, explicit, and legitimate purposes. Data cannot be further processed in a manner incompatible with those purposes, except for archiving purposes in the public interest, scientific/historical research, or statistical purposes.

If your chatbot collects user data (like conversation history or contact information), you must specify exactly how this data will be used - whether for improving responses, analytics, or customer support. The data cannot be repurposed for other uses without new consent. Remember, using customer conversations to train AI models is considered a separate purpose and requires explicit user consent. This applies to both:
  • Your own AI model training activities
  • Third-party AI providers used by your chatbot provider, who might use the data to improve their models
When selecting an AI model provider, ensure they:
  • Offer clear documentation about their data usage policies
  • Provide options to opt out of model training
  • Allow you to maintain GDPR compliance through appropriate data processing agreements

3. Data Minimisation

Personal data must be adequate, relevant, and limited to what is necessary in relation to the purposes for which they are processed. Only collect and process data that is essential for your stated purposes.

Your chatbot should only collect information that's necessary for its function. For example, if the chatbot provides product support, it shouldn't ask for personal information beyond what's needed to resolve the user's query.

4. Storage Limitation

Personal data should be kept in a form that permits identification of data subjects for no longer than necessary for the purposes of processing. Data may be stored for longer periods only for archiving purposes in the public interest, scientific/historical research, or statistical purposes.

Implement automatic data retention policies for chat histories and user data. Define clear timeframes for how long personal data will be stored and ensure automatic deletion when that period expires.

5. Integrity and Confidentiality

Personal data must be processed in a manner that ensures appropriate security, including protection against unauthorized or unlawful processing and against accidental loss, destruction, or damage. This requires using appropriate technical or organizational measures.

Ensure your chatbot platform uses secure protocols (HTTPS), encrypts data in transit and at rest, and implements access controls for conversation histories. Choose platforms that offer proper security certifications.

6. Transfer of Data to Third Countries

GDPR has strict rules about transferring personal data outside the European Economic Area (EEA). Data can only be transferred to countries that provide an "adequate" level of data protection, as determined by the European Commission, or when specific safeguards are in place.

If your chatbot uses AI models or servers located outside the EEA, you must ensure:
  • You have a valid legal basis for the transfer (like Standard Contractual Clauses)
  • The recipient country provides adequate data protection
  • Users are informed about potential international data transfers
  • Technical measures are in place to protect data during transfer
Or even better, you can host your AI models and servers in the EU to avoid any issues with GDPR.

This is particularly important for chatbots using cloud-based services or US-based AI models like those from OpenAI (GPT models) and Anthropic (Claude models). Always verify where the AI models are hosted and where your chatbot's data is processed and stored.

How to Create a GDPR Compliant Chatbot

Easy! DocuChat has everything you're looking for. Here's why:

  1. DocuChat is offerred by an EU-based company, Apolytus OÜ, based in Estonia.
  2. All the data is processed in the EU, in our servers in Frankfurt, Germany.
  3. We offer the state-of-the-art AI models from OpenAI, Anthropic, and others, all of which are hosted in the EU. For OpenAI, you can use our Azure OpenAI integration to host the models in the EU. For others, we already host them in our Frankfurt, Germany servers so you don't have to worry about anything.
  4. We offer a simple option in your organization settings to enforce data residency in the EU. This restricts chatbot settings that could potentially cause data to be processed outside of the European Union. When enabled:
    • Administrators will be prevented from selecting AI models hosted outside the EU.
    • Features that may transfer data to non-EU regions will be disabled.
  5. Data protection, privacy, and security are priority-zero for us. We offer end-to-end encryption for all data in transit and at rest, and we use industry-standard security measures. And we choose all our sub-processors carefully to ensure the highest standards of security and data protection. For an overview of our security measures, you can read more in our Trust Center.

Give DocuChat a try now with a 14-days free trial and create your own GDPR Compliant Chatbot with ease!