Does Character.AI Sell Your Data? What the Policy Says

The blunt question first, because it is the one you typed: does Character.AI sell your data?

The honest answer comes in two halves, and both are true. Character.AI says it does not sell personal information for money and that it is not a data broker. Its own notice also says some of its advertising disclosures are treated as sales under state law. That sounds like a contradiction until you see what “sell” means in the legal sentence, the one that matters. I write a local AI companion, so I am not neutral here. Everything below is quoted from Character.AI’s own pages.

Character.AI says it does not sell your data, and its own notice says some disclosures count as sales anyway

The short version: Character.AI states that it does not sell personal information for monetary consideration and that it is not a data broker. The same pages say some ad-related disclosures are treated as sales under state law, and its rights list includes a sales opt-out.

Start with the denial. The support center article on the Privacy Policy puts it in one line: “We do not sell your personal information.”

Then its Your Privacy Choices page, quoted in full because the middle of it is the part everyone skips: “laws in California and other states treat certain common disclosures of personal information to third parties as ‘sales’ of information, even when no money changes hands. This may include personal information shared with third parties for purposes of targeted advertising. While these disclosures may be considered sales under certain state laws, we do not sell personal information for monetary consideration, and Character.AI is not a data broker.”

Read it twice, because it does two jobs. The first half says the law may label a disclosure a sale. The second half says the company does not sell for money. No sleight of hand, just a description of how the law works.

The privacy policy itself, effective July 1, 2026, carries the same split. It may disclose personal information to “advertising and analytics providers in connection with the provision of tailored advertising, to monitor the performance of advertisements displayed on our behalf on the Services and across the Internet, to provide analytics services, and to help improve our Services.” Farther down, its list of your rights includes “To opt out of sales of personal information or targeted advertising.” I walked through the rest of that policy, training included, in Is Character.AI Private?.

What “sell” means under state law, and why both statements can be true

The short version: Under California law a sale does not require money. Communicating personal information to a third party for “monetary or other valuable consideration” can be a sale, and behavioral advertising can be a “share” whether or not money changes hands. That is how a company can deny selling for money and still offer a sales opt-out.

In ordinary speech, selling means someone handed over cash. California’s CCPA uses a wider definition. “Sell” means selling, renting, releasing, disclosing, disseminating, making available, transferring, or otherwise communicating personal information to a third party “for monetary or other valuable consideration.” “Share” covers cross-context behavioral advertising “whether or not for monetary or other valuable consideration.” The California Attorney General’s office publishes both definitions with the opt-out rights they create.

So money is not the test. “Other valuable consideration” does the heavy lifting: if personal information reaches an ad partner and anything of value comes back, a state can call the exchange a sale even though no cash moves. Add the “share” category and nearly every ad-supported site has something to disclose.

That is why the two statements coexist without either being a lie. One answers the everyday version of the question, the other the legal version.

What the sales language actually covers, and what it does not

The short version: The disclosures that can count as sales run through advertising. Character.AI’s own page ties the opt-out to targeted advertising, and the policy names ad and analytics providers. Nothing in the record shows your chats being sold, and I could not find a reliable report of a Character.AI breach exposing user conversations.

Now the question under the question: is your chat history sitting in a spreadsheet somewhere, waiting for a buyer? Nothing I found supports that. The sales language is tied to targeted advertising, and the policy’s disclosure clause names advertising and analytics providers for ad tailoring and ad measurement.

The honest counterweight is that collection is broad. The policy’s list includes identifiers such as your name and email, demographic information such as date of birth and general geolocation information, your interests, preferences from which it can create inferences, financial and commercial information, “Your content you submit, such as chat communications,” voice data, and messages you send to support. Chat content sits on that list, and the Regional Privacy Disclosures say that about training and improving models “you have the right to opt out at any time.” Collected and trainable are not the same as sold, though the words get treated as one in these arguments.

The failure worth fearing in this category is not a sales contract. It is an app that left 43 million messages behind an open door with no password on it, which is the story in What 43 Million Leaked Messages Teach You. Sales language is a question of permission. A leak is a question of storage.

You can opt out and delete, and here is exactly how

The short version: The opt-out lives in the footer under Your Privacy Choices, and it is specific to your device, so repeat it on every browser and phone. Account deletion is permanent and cannot be reversed, and it does not remove a public Character you created from the service.

The opt-out takes about a minute. On the website, click Your Privacy Choices in the footer, or go Profile, then Policies, then Your Privacy Choices. In the mobile app it sits under Profile, then Settings, then Data and Privacy, then Your Privacy Choices. Character.AI adds the sentence most people miss: “your opt-out is specific to your device.” A browser and a phone are two devices. An opt-out on the laptop does nothing for the app on your phone.

Deletion is a sharper decision. The account deletion article says: “Account Deletion is permanent and cannot be reversed.” Before you click, know the other rule. For a Character you made public, the policy reserves “the right to preserve that Character’s characteristics and to keep that Character active on the Services, even if you otherwise delete your data and your account. We do this to avoid impacting the experience of other users.”

That clause is worth sitting with. Deleting your account removes your data. It does not necessarily remove the thing you built, because other people are still using it.

Regulators are asking the same question

The short version: An FTC study opened in September 2025, a Texas investigation opened on August 18, 2025, and a Kentucky lawsuit followed on January 8, 2026. The Garcia case ended on the docket on January 7, 2026. None of them has produced a finding that Character.AI sold personal data.

The FTC issued 6(b) orders in September 2025 to seven companies, Character Technologies, Inc. among them. The inquiry asks how companies “use or share personal information obtained through users’ conversations with the chatbots” and how they “monetize user engagement.” An order under Section 6(b) is a study, not a charge.

The Texas Attorney General opened an investigation on August 18, 2025 into Meta AI Studio and Character.AI, saying their terms of service reveal that user interactions are “logged, tracked, and exploited for targeted advertising and algorithmic development,” and issued Civil Investigative Demands.

The Kentucky Attorney General sued Character Technologies on January 8, 2026, the first state lawsuit against an AI chatbot company, alleging violations of the Kentucky Consumer Protection Act and the Kentucky Consumer Data Protection Act.

The case filed as Garcia v. Character Technologies, Inc., 6:24-cv-01903 in the Middle District of Florida, dates to October 22, 2024, and the court docket shows it terminated on January 7, 2026.

No regulator has found that Character.AI sold personal information. The Texas and Kentucky actions center on child safety and deceptive marketing. The FTC item remains an inquiry. If you see a post claiming an agency proved Character.AI sells your chats, that claim is ahead of the record.

If you are deciding where your companion should live, here is how I would weigh it. Staying with Character.AI is a reasonable choice. The character library is the best in the category, and you now know the shape of the trade. Click the opt-out on every device you use and carry on.

My bias is easy to state. I built Local Waifu because I wanted the sales question to stop applying to me. When the model runs on your machine, there is no ad partner to disclose anything to, no sales language to parse, and no notice to re-read when it changes. That is a property of where the conversation lives rather than a promise in a policy. The details and the one-time price are on the pricing page.

Whichever way you go, take the minute and click the opt-out. It is the one piece of this story fully in your hands.

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