“It's encrypted, in transit and at rest”

So even if it were handed over, it would be unreadable

It cannot summarise a document it cannot read.

Encrypting data in storage and in transit is standard practice and it protects against theft. It does not protect against a demand for the data an AI service processes. The European Data Protection Board examined this exact situation: its Use Case 6 covers transfers to cloud providers that need access to data in the clear, and its conclusion is quoted below. An AI assistant is that situation by design, because it cannot summarise a document it cannot read or answer a question it cannot see. The material is unscrambled at the moment it is used, and that is the moment it can be demanded. Encryption where the customer holds the keys, over data the service never needs to read, is far stronger protection. It is simply not available for a tool whose purpose is to read the customer's work.

“In the given scenarios, where unencrypted personal data is technically necessary for the provision of the service by the processor, transport encryption and data-at-rest encryption even taken together, do not constitute a supplementary measure that ensures an essentially equivalent level of protection if the data importer is in possession of the cryptographic keys.”

What this does not settle. Adopted 18 June 2021 and never withdrawn. The sentence before it is worth reading too: the board says that in these situations it cannot, with today's technology, think of a way to stop that access.

18 U.S.C. §2713 · checked 2026-09-04

EDPB Recommendations 01/2020 v2.0 on supplementary measures