Artificial intelligence and our data

Ever since they hit the market, generative AIs have dominated conversations about technology. Fields such as marketing and advertising even treated them as just another passing wave — like NFTs, cryptocurrencies, Apple Vision and the ill-fated Metaverse. That was not the case: AI is here to stay.

Many industries have adopted the technology as a tool for generating insights, especially creative fields, where AI deepens strategic thinking and helps us look at an idea from other angles.

Where does the data come from?

OpenAI took the lead by launching ChatGPT and quickly became a giant in the fiercely contested AI market. Since then, many people in tech have been wary of the data sources used to train these models.

Ask ChatGPT where that data comes from and the answer is always generic: “publicly available sources on the internet”. A good part of it probably comes from consents we ourselves gave when accepting the privacy policies of digital products. You know those enormous legal texts nobody reads? Those.

A new race

The truth is that our personal data, with our consent, has always been concentrated in American companies — Google, Wikipedia, Meta, Apple and Microsoft, among others, which own the largest data sources on the internet.

Early 2025 brought something new: DeepSeek, a Chinese start-up, released an AI that sent the shares of US tech giants tumbling. The reason? Delivering comparable or better results with far less financial and hardware investment than its predecessors.

The rise of a non-American product triggered a new “space race”, this time for leadership in AI. Between one headline and the next, the US government raised suspicions that DeepSeek is unsafe, does not respect privacy and shares user data with the Chinese government. Conspiracy theories emerged on both sides — and, caught in the middle, here we are again, asking where our information is better protected.

Competition is healthy

Theories aside, DeepSeek’s arrival is welcome because it creates competition. And competition speeds up the market and makes products more democratic, competitive and accessible.

The question is not choosing between having your data in the US or in China, but having digital products spread across countries. The internet was born to be global, not local. Diluting American dominance of the tech industry is necessary and healthy — including for us in Brazil, who can start to believe that a genuinely Brazilian tech product can also scale globally.

Having different countries lead different areas of technology may be the way to keep the internet open, as it was meant to be. Products like DeepSeek act as a cold shower on an overheated industry.

What now?

Maybe it is time to rethink the consents we give all the time when we accept the terms of use of digital products. New chapters will come. And is our data really safe?

With whom?

Images: Pexels