How SKU.io uses AI, and what happens to your data

This page describes exactly what SKU.io sends to AI providers, on whose account, and what you can switch off. For what the AI features do, see AI & Automation.

The short version

• AI is off until you turn it on, and off means off. A new SKU.io account has AI off. An owner or admin turns it on in Settings → AI Assistant by adding an API key for the AI provider they choose; the AI features switch there then comes on. Switching it off stops every AI feature, whether it would run on your own key or on SKU.io's. Document reading and smart search work differently; both are described below.
• You choose what AI can see. Seven data switches (products, inventory, purchasing, sales orders, customer details, financials, returns) decide what the assistant and the AI features built on it may read. Turn one off and that data is hidden or masked before anything is sent to the AI provider. Each person's role permissions apply on top: AI never shows someone data their role cannot open. The switches do not apply to document reading (you choose which documents to upload) or to smart search, which indexes product names, SKUs and customer names whatever the switches say.
• Your data is not used to train AI models, with two exceptions that depend on your own key. SKU.io sends data to AI providers only through their APIs. Under the API terms of Anthropic, OpenAI and Microsoft Azure, the provider does not use API inputs to train its models. The same is true of Google's Gemini API on a paid (billing-enabled) plan; on Google's free tier, Google's terms allow it to use inputs and outputs to improve its models. DeepSeek's terms allow it to use inputs and outputs to improve its technology unless you opt out with DeepSeek. Google and DeepSeek are used only with a key you enter yourself, so you decide whether either receives anything (see "Backup provider" below).
• We keep a record and then delete it. Assistant conversations are deleted after 90 days. The AI activity log, which records who used which AI feature and on which data, is kept for 180 days so that admins can audit it.

Which AI providers receive your data

What it does	Provider	Whose account it runs on	What is sent
The AI assistant (chat) and the AI features built on it (smart table filters, report builder, template and text editors, listing content and TikTok captions, TikTok Shop listing fixes, Amazon listing-image checks, product and attribute suggestions, product density estimates, inventory-aging suggestions, Pulse summaries, send-plan and brand-report write-ups, Amazon reimbursement case text, cost-allocation proposals, repair diagnosis, set-up help during onboarding, resale-certificate and warranty reading)	The provider you pick in Settings → AI Assistant: Anthropic (Claude), OpenAI, Google (Gemini) or DeepSeek. Some features can be set to a different provider of their own. Resale-certificate reading uses Anthropic whenever an Anthropic key is entered.	Your own API key whenever you have entered one, so your agreement with that provider applies and you pay for it. Otherwise, for OpenAI only, SKU.io's OpenAI account (see below).	What you type or attach, plus the records the feature needs to answer, filtered by your data switches and your role. For listing-image checks, the product images.
Duty-rate research	The provider you pick	Always your own key (unless you choose to allow SKU.io's)	Product descriptions and classification data.
Document reading (supplier invoices, vendor credits, landed-cost and customer-PO documents, payment proofs, repair receipts, bank-statement screenshots, customs forms)	Microsoft Azure AI Document Intelligence reads the document. For customer POs, payment proofs, and invoices or POs that arrive in the body of an email, the text it reads is then sent to the provider you pick to pick out the fields.	Azure: SKU.io's Azure account. Second step: as in the first row.	The document you upload or email in (PDF or image), or the email text.
Smart search ("@" mentions in the assistant, and finding saved custom reports)	OpenAI embeddings (text-embedding-3-small)	SKU.io's OpenAI account	Product names and SKUs, customer names, and your saved custom-report prompts. They are turned into search vectors that stay in SKU.io's own search index.

Backup provider. If your chosen provider is unavailable or rate-limited, the assistant retries that request once with another provider you have entered a key for, checked in the order Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, DeepSeek. To keep a provider out entirely, remove its key in Settings → AI Assistant.

Whose account is used. If you have entered your own key for a provider, every request to that provider runs on your account, under your agreement with it, and you pay for it. That includes a backup retry. If you have not entered an OpenAI key, requests to OpenAI run on SKU.io's OpenAI account under the same no-training API terms. Smart search always runs on SKU.io's OpenAI account. The Access tab on Settings → AI Assistant shows which account each provider is using.

If a provider rejects your key, Settings → AI Assistant says so, and features that use that provider stop until you enter a working key. SKU.io never switches to its own key in the meantime.

What is not an AI feature of ours. If you connect your own AI tool (Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor or similar) to SKU.io through the SKU.io MCP connection, that tool reads your data through your own token, and your AI provider's terms govern what it does with that data. SKU.io calls no model in that path. Your data switches and role permissions still limit what the tool can read. An owner or admin can turn MCP access, or MCP writes, off in Settings → Developer → MCP Server.

Controls you have

• Turn AI off. An owner or admin switches AI features off in Settings → AI Assistant. You can keep your keys. The assistant and every AI feature in the first table above stop, including duty-rate research and the AI step of document reading, and that includes any feature that would have run on SKU.io's OpenAI account. AI can only be on while the provider you chose has your own key, so removing that key also switches AI off. Some features also have their own switch there (smart filters, listing content, template editor, listing-quality checks, inventory aging and Pulse), so you can keep AI on and turn just those off.
• Limit what AI can see. Use the data switches or a preset. Balanced hides customer details. Strict also hides financials and returns. With customer details off, names, emails, phone numbers and addresses are masked in the records SKU.io reads for the assistant or an AI feature, before they are sent to the AI provider. Masking works on the fields SKU.io knows hold those details. In free text, such as a prompt you type or an order note, it removes email addresses and phone numbers but cannot reliably find names or street addresses, so those can still reach the provider. Smart search is the other exception: it still indexes customer names (see the table above).
• Limit who can use AI. Only roles that are given the AI permission can use the assistant and the other AI features. Database-query tools are off by default, and only admins can turn them on.
• Document reading. Reading supplier invoices, vendor credits, landed-cost and customer-PO documents and payment proofs is off until it is turned on in Settings → Document OCR. Bank-statement screenshots and scanned customs forms are read when you upload them, whatever that setting says.
• See what happened. Settings → AI Assistant → Activity lists each time the assistant reads your data and each run of an AI feature: who, which feature, which data types, which provider and model. A chat reply that reads no data from your account, document reading, and smart-search indexing are not listed there.
• Stop external AI tools. Turn off MCP access in Settings → Developer → MCP Server, or revoke an individual connection.

What SKU.io stores, and for how long

Data	Where	How long
Assistant conversations and messages	Your account's database	Deleted after 90 days
AI activity log (who, which feature, which data types, provider, model)	Your account's database	Deleted after 180 days
MCP tool-call log	Your account's database	Deleted after 180 days
Images attached to a chat but never sent	Your account's storage	Deleted after 1 day
Results read from documents (the extracted fields, kept with the document)	Your account's database	Kept with the document until you delete it
Search vectors for product names, SKUs, customer names and saved reports	SKU.io's search index	Kept while the search index exists; updated when the record changes

SKU.io asks OpenAI not to store its responses (OpenAI's store setting is off). Each AI provider still has its own retention policy for API requests (for example, up to 30 days for abuse monitoring). See each provider's terms: Anthropic, OpenAI, Google Gemini API, Microsoft Azure AI.

Questions

Open a support ticket from inside SKU.io (Open a support ticket in the app bar).