What the GDPR is, in one useful sentence
Regulation (EU) 2016/679, in force since 25 May 2018, governs how organisations process data about natural persons. Its central idea is not prohibition but the accountability principle of Article 5(2): complying is not enough, you have to be able to demonstrate it. Everything else — legal bases, contracts, records, security measures — exists to make that demonstration possible.
That is precisely the part generative AI breaks. Not because the models are insecure, but because the usage happens outside any record.
What counts as personal data when we are talking about prompts
The GDPR defines personal data as any information about an identified or identifiable natural person, directly or indirectly. The definition is deliberately broad, and in the context of a prompt it tends to surprise people:
- A first name and surname, obviously. Also a national ID number, a work email address or a phone number.
- An indirect identifier: "the sales rep for the northern region who joined in March" identifies one specific person inside one specific organisation.
- A long block of text pasted without reading it: a contract, a forwarded email, meeting minutes, a spreadsheet with a column of names nobody remembered was there.
- Pseudonymised data that can be reversed. Replacing a name with "Client 4" anonymises nothing if the rest of the text lets you reconstruct who that is.
Genuine anonymisation — making re-identification impossible — does take the data outside the scope of the GDPR. It is the only clean way out, which is why it is the one Moviwa automates.
The four requirements that fail at once
When an employee pastes personal data into an AI tool the company has not contracted, it is not one article that is breached: it is four, simultaneously.
1. There is no legal basis for that disclosure
Article 6 requires a legal basis for every processing operation. A company may well have a basis for processing its customers' data in its CRM, but that does not cover disclosing it to a third party with no role in the relationship. The disclosure is a separate processing operation and needs its own justification.
2. There is no processor agreement
Article 28 requires a contract with any provider processing personal data on the controller's behalf, governing purpose, duration, security measures and what happens to the data at the end. Accepting the terms of a free tool from an employee's personal account is not a processor agreement, and it is not signed by anyone with the authority to sign it.
3. There may be an international transfer without safeguards
Many providers process data outside the European Economic Area. Chapter V requires specific safeguards — an adequacy decision, standard contractual clauses or similar — and an assessment of the destination country. None of that exists when the transfer is decided by an employee from their browser.
If your organisation provides services to the Spanish public sector, the same question reappears under a different name and different thresholds in the ENS, Spain's National Security Framework.
4. The processing appears in no record
Article 30 requires a record of processing activities. Invisible processing is not in the record, so the company states in writing, to its supervisory authority, something that is not true. Not in bad faith: because nobody knew it was happening.
On top of that sits Article 32, which requires security measures proportionate to the risk. It is hard to argue the measures are proportionate when there is not even visibility.
What happens if the tool trains on what you send it
This is the question that comes up most, and the honest answer has two parts.
The enterprise plans of the major providers generally undertake contractually not to use conversation content to train models. Free and consumer plans, in general, either make no such commitment or make it conditional on a setting the user has to turn on.
The distinction matters, but it is secondary. Even if the provider does not train on the data, the disclosure has already happened: a third party is processing personal data with no processor agreement in place. Training makes the problem worse; it does not create it.
And the real gap is not in the corporate plan the company contracted. It is in the personal accounts nobody contracted at all.