Privacy Notice
Last updated: 4 October 2026
This notice explains what information Ask GlobalNewsAI and GlobalNews AI handle, why, who receives it and what you can do about it. It describes the product as the code actually works today. Where a fact has not been decided yet, this page says so instead of guessing.
Who is responsible
The organisation responsible for this service and its contact address for privacy requests are still being finalised. They will be published on this page before general release. Until then, privacy questions can be sent through Help & feedback in the product.
Using Ask without an account
You can ask a few questions as a guest. When you send your first guest question we set a guest cookie and store your guest conversations (your questions and the answers) on our servers. A guest session lasts at most 7 days and is never extended; it is then deleted automatically, as described under “Your guest data” below, where you can also delete it at once. “Sign in to continue” moves all guest conversations from this browser to your account; signing in any other way moves none of them, and they stay visible in this browser after you sign out until they are deleted. To limit abuse of the free questions we count guest questions per network using a pseudonymous identifier that changes every day and is derived from your network address with a secret key. The address itself is not stored in our limit records. When those identifiers are deleted is explained under “How long information is kept”.
Signing in with Google
Sign-in uses Google and asks only for your email address (the "openid email" scope). We do not receive your Google contacts, your email messages or your profile photo. We store your email address and Google’s account identifier to keep your account.
Your questions and answers
Questions you ask while signed in are stored with your account so you can continue the conversation and find it again. Answers are kept for a short time so the same question can be shown again without new work. Deleting your account deletes your conversations, saved items, follows, alerts, comments, support messages and search history.
Who processes your question
To answer, the text of your question (and, for a follow-up, your previous question) is sent to an AI model provider (OpenAI). Search words taken from your question are sent to news search services (GNews, GDELT and the news feeds we use; X and YouTube only where enabled). They receive the question or search words, not your email address. Their own retention and processing terms are set by those providers and are not yet summarised here.
Images from news publishers
When an answer or story shows an article image, your browser loads it directly from the publisher or news service that hosts it. That host can see your IP address and browser details, as with any web image.
Service records
We keep technical records to run the service: request logs without your question text, Ask diagnostics that store only categories and country codes (no question text, no account) for 30 days, and usage counts. We do not use advertising, cross-site tracking or third-party analytics. Separately from our application, our hosting and network providers process IP addresses in their own infrastructure and security logs under their own terms.
Cookies and similar technologies
We use cookies and browser storage that the service needs (sign-in, security, guest conversations) and two preference settings you choose (language and appearance). We use no analytics, advertising or tracking cookies. The full list, what each item stores and how long it lasts is on the Cookies page, which also lets you remove your preference settings.
Your choices
You can delete your account in account settings, which removes the data listed above. You can delete your guest conversations from this browser at any time under “Your guest data” below or on the Cookies page. You can clear your search history. You can change or remove your language and appearance settings at any time. A copy-of-your-data (export) feature does not exist yet; a request path will be published together with the contact address above.
How long information is kept
These are our Beta retention periods (our own policy, not legal minimums). Guest conversations: at most 7 days from your first guest question, then deleted automatically by a guest clean-up that always runs while the service is running (the exact times are under “Your guest data” below), or at once when you delete them. Ask diagnostics: 30 days, deleted by their own clean-up. Sign-in sessions: expire after 30 days. The following periods are our target policy and are applied by a separate scheduled clean-up; that clean-up is switched off unless we turn it on as an operational decision, and while it is off these records are not deleted automatically when the period ends: account conversations 12 months after their last activity (unless you delete them sooner or saved an answer from them; deleting your account always deletes them), support messages 24 months after the case is resolved, detailed usage and compute records 90 days, guest limit identifiers about a week after the day they count.
Changes to this notice
When the product changes how it handles information, this page is updated and the date above changes.
Your guest data
You can use Ask without an account. This is exactly what happens to what you send as a guest.
Without signing in you can get 3 answers. A question we cannot answer does not use one of them.
Your first guest question sets a guest cookie (gna_guest) and a security cookie (gna_csrf). The guest session lasts at most 7 days from that moment and is never extended — not by using Ask and not by signing in.
Your guest questions and answers are stored on our servers, not only in your browser, until the guest session ends. They are then deleted automatically within about 72 hours. This guest clean-up runs whenever the service is running and does not depend on any other setting.
“Sign in to continue” moves all guest conversations from this browser to your account, not only the one you were in. Guest answers you have left do not carry over.
Signing in any other way moves nothing. Guest conversations stay with this browser, are not added to your account, and are visible again in this browser after you sign out, until they are deleted. On a shared device, delete them before you leave.
You can delete your guest conversations from this browser at any time with “Delete my guest data now”. It deletes them from our servers immediately and removes both guest cookies. The daily network counters that limit abuse of free questions hold no questions or answers and are kept for their own period.
Checking this browser for guest data…