From choosing your first task to locking down training settings, here is a practical first month with an AI chatbot, in plain English.
This guide is general information, not technical or legal advice. If you’ve lost money or personal information, contact your bank, IDCARE on 1800 595 160, or report it through ReportCyber at cyber.gov.au.
Quick summary
- Set privacy and training controls before your first chat, because opting out of training only affects future conversations.
- Treat personal information as off-limits: the OAIC recommends not entering personal or sensitive information into publicly available generative AI tools.
- Better prompts give better answers: add context, specifics, your goal and the format you want.
- Chatbots can sound confident and still be wrong, so check anything important against an official source or a qualified professional.
- Australian organisations covered by the Privacy Act must disclose certain computer-program decision-making in their privacy policies from 10 December 2026.
Signing up for an AI chatbot takes five minutes. Using it well, and safely, takes longer, because the privacy settings are easy to miss and the answers need a healthy dose of checking. This timeline covers the first month: what to sort out on day one, which tasks to try early, and the habits worth keeping once the novelty wears off.
Before You Sign Up: Decide What You’ll Actually Use It For
Before handing over an email address, think about what you want the chatbot to do. Common starting points include drafting everyday text, brainstorming ideas, summarising long documents and explaining unfamiliar topics in plain English. Your answer matters, because it shapes which settings you need and which habits to build.
It also sets your privacy line. The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner, which handles privacy regulation in Australia, recommends as a matter of best practice that organisations do not enter personal information, particularly sensitive information, into publicly available generative AI tools. That caution works just as well for individuals. A simple rule: never type anything you would not be comfortable seeing repeated somewhere else.
Decide on the device, too. If you plan to use a phone app rather than the website, run the usual checks for downloading apps safely before you install anything, starting with the developer’s name and the reviews.
Day One: Create the Account and Lock Down the Basics
Creating the account is the easy part. Do two things properly.
First, use a strong, unique passphrase instead of recycling one from another account. A chatbot account can hold months of conversation history, and reused credentials make it easier for someone else to get in.
Second, turn on multi-factor authentication if the service offers it. That means a code from an app or a prompt on your phone in addition to your password, so a stolen password alone is not enough to access the account.
Then find the privacy settings. In ChatGPT, open Settings, choose Data controls and switch off “Chat history & training” if you do not want new conversations used to train the model. For Gemini, open your Google Account settings, go to Data & privacy and turn off Web & App Activity. One catch: these controls only affect future conversations, so anything typed before you changed the setting may already have been kept. Set them before your first chat.
First Week: Start With Low-Stakes Tasks
Spend the first week on tasks where a mistake costs nothing. Draft a birthday message, plan a week of dinners around what is already in the fridge, or ask for a simple explanation of a term you keep seeing. These show you what the tool does well without exposing anything private.
Keep the personal-information rule running the whole time. Describe your situation in general terms, such as “someone renting in a capital city”, rather than pasting in your exact address, income or identification numbers. If you want to test it on a document, strip out names and contact details first.
Week Two and Three: Better Questions, Then Finding the Limits
Once you know your way around, work on asking better questions. A workable formula used in several guides is context, plus specific information, plus your goal, plus the format you want. Compare “write an email about a late delivery” with “write a short, polite email to a furniture store asking when my delivery will arrive, and keep it under 120 words.” The second gives the chatbot something to work with. Context helps, but unnecessary detail distracts, so aim for prompts that are brief yet complete.
Week three is for finding the edges. Ask about a topic you know well and see what it gets right and wrong. Ask the same question twice and notice whether the answers differ. Chatbots generate responses from patterns in text, which means they can produce answers that sound confident and are still wrong. Anything that matters, from a legal deadline to a product specification, deserves a check against an official source before you act on it, and health, legal or money questions belong with a qualified professional.
Month One: Review What You’ve Shared and Tidy Up
At the end of the month, do a tidy-up. Review your chat history and delete conversations you no longer need, especially any where you shared more than you intended. Reopen the settings and confirm your training opt-outs are still in place, because updates can rename or reset controls.
If you started a paid plan or free trial to test premium features, check the renewal terms and the cancellation process now, while you still remember signing up, the same as you would with any subscription.
It also helps to know the broader picture. The Privacy Act 1988 covers organisations with an annual turnover of more than $3 million, and the Australian Information Commissioner has published guidance on how privacy law applies to commercially available AI products. From 10 December 2026, organisations covered by the Australian Privacy Principles must include information in their privacy policies where a computer program makes or informs decisions that significantly affect people’s rights or interests. Reading a provider’s privacy policy before sharing personal information is a habit worth forming now.
Every Few Months: Recheck the Settings and Your Habits
Settings drift, and so do habits. Every few months, spend ten minutes running through a short checklist: confirm the training and history controls are still set the way you want, delete old conversations, review the app’s permissions on your phone, and look for any notice about changed terms or a data breach. If your account is ever caught up in a breach, change your passphrase promptly and watch for follow-up scams that pretend to come from the provider.
Open the privacy settings of the chatbot you have been meaning to try, and set them before you send your first message.
Your questions answered
Q: Can I stop a chatbot from using my conversations for training?
A: Usually, yes. In ChatGPT you switch off ‘Chat history & training’ under Data controls, and for Gemini you turn off Web & App Activity in your Google Account settings. These changes only apply to conversations you have after making them.
Q: Is it safe to paste documents into a chatbot?
A: Only after removing anything personal. Names, contact details, account numbers and identification numbers should come out first, because information you enter can be stored or used in ways you cannot control.
Q: Do I need a paid plan to try an AI chatbot?
A: No. Most major chatbots offer a free tier that is enough to learn the basics. If you do start a paid trial, diarise the renewal date and check the cancellation process so you are not charged for something you no longer use.
Q: How do I know if a chatbot’s answer is trustworthy?
A: Ask about a topic you already know and see how it performs, and compare answers to the same question asked twice. For anything that matters, confirm the details with the official source or a qualified professional.