Perplexity Rewrites Its Privacy Policy and Two Big Things Disappear

Perplexity swapped out its whole privacy policy this week. The old one, dated February 5, 2026, is gone. A new, shorter one dated July 2, 2026 took its place. It is about 40% shorter, and two things you could count on before are no longer written down: the setting that let you stop Perplexity from training its AI on your searches, and the promise that it would not train on your email. The new policy also covers Comet, Perplexity's web browser, for the first time.

In human terms: A user connected Gmail and Google Calendar to Perplexity's Comet browser so it could see their deadlines and pull up old email threads while they worked. One reason they felt okay doing that was a line in the old policy: Perplexity said it would not use your email to train its AI. This week they go back to check that the line is still there. It isn't. The setting that let them turn off AI training on their searches is gone from the policy too. Everything still works the same, and the browser still reads the inbox. But the written promises they relied on when they connected it are no longer in the document.

Why this matters: Those two lines were the reason a working professional could feel safe letting Comet into their inbox. Both are now missing from the text. Taking a promise out of a policy is not the same as changing what the product does behind the scenes, and we are careful about that below. Still, the direction is clear. A policy that used to spell out specific protections now uses vague wording and points you to a setting it no longer explains. If your job is to check what a tool actually promises before you use it, this tool now promises less than it did in June. Mechanics and details follow:

The mechanics: The setting to stop AI training is gone from the text. The old policy said it plainly: "You may opt out of information collection for AI (which would prohibit us from using your search information to improve our AI models) in your settings page if you are logged into the Services." The new policy lists other choices you can make (access, deletion, ad opt-outs, Comet controls), but there is no line about opting out of AI training. At the same time, the policy still says it uses your data to "Improve or create services and products, including our AI models."

One important caution here. All we can confirm is that the written opt-out was taken out of the policy. Whether the actual on/off switch still works inside your settings is something the policy cannot tell us, and we did not test it ourselves. We are reporting what changed in the document. We are not saying the switch itself was turned off. If you use that opt-out, go check your settings directly. Neither version of the policy will answer it for you.

The email promise is gone too. The old policy made a clear, specific promise about synced Gmail and Calendar data: "we do not use or disclose Email Service Information to create, train, improve or fine-tune AI models." The new policy says nothing about email data, about Gmail or Calendar syncing, or about any email-specific training promise. For a browser built around reading your mail, that is the biggest thing missing.

Comet is now covered by the policy. The new policy applies to data collected "through our websites, the Comet browser, mobile applications ... and other services," and it adds a "Choices in Comet" section for things like third-party cookies and Comet Incognito. The old policy never mentioned Comet. This is a rewrite built around the browser launch.

A few smaller changes came along with it. The list of ways Perplexity uses your data added a new one: "Market the products or services of our business partners." The old promise to delete your data on a set timeline, "we aim to delete your personal information from our servers within 30 days," is gone, replaced with open-ended wording about keeping data "as long as necessary." And the old policy's detailed list of data types was boiled down to three short bullets, which is the quiet version of the same move: specific wording swapped for general.