If a pet is shared with your family, or you've handed a conversation to a vet, it's fair to ask who can read what. Here's exactly who sees an AI chat, and when.
Who can see your AI chats
| Who | What they can see | When |
|---|---|---|
| You | Every AI chat you started | Always — ongoing, ended, expired or archived |
| The pet's owner, and family members with the Consultation permission on that pet | AI chats started by other people | Only after the chat has ended and a summary has been saved |
| A vet who is, or has been, in a vet chat about the same pet | That pet's ended AI chat summaries | Once the chat has ended |
In other words, a conversation in progress is yours alone. Once it's finished, it becomes part of that pet's shared health record so whoever else cares for the pet can catch up.
Please note: only the person who started an AI chat can end it. Others can't close your conversation to make it visible sooner.
For vets, the summaries appear under an AI chat tab in the pet's chat history (with "No previous AI chats for this pet" when there are none). Vets with no consultation history for your pet can't access them. This is deliberate: it means the vet treating your pet can see what was already asked and advised, instead of starting cold.
When you hand off to a real vet
Tapping Chat with a real vet intentionally sends a summary of that conversation to a licensed vet as the opening message. You're told this on the confirmation card before it happens: "We'll send a summary of this conversation to a licensed vet and start your chat."
Files you send
Every file you send in an AI chat is saved to that pet's document library. If the pet is shared with your family, anyone with access to that pet's documents can open it there.
Important: treat the document library as shared-by-default when a pet is shared. If a file isn't something you want other carers to see, don't send it in a chat about that pet.
Data used to improve the service
The Ask A Vet Terms & Conditions allow de-identified, aggregated or anonymised data to be used to improve the services, health insights, algorithms, products, user experience and research, in accordance with the Privacy Policy.
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