Can the company read my journal entries?
Short answer
Usually yes, for a moment, if the AI reads your writing on a server. That is the honest cost of server-side analysis. What separates a trustworthy app is what happens after: whether it sells your entries, trains on them, or lets anyone else see them.
In depth
There is no way around the first part. For an AI to surface your emotions and themes, it has to read your text, and most apps do that on a server. While it works, the company technically can read your writing. Only end-to-end encryption, where even the company cannot read a word, fully closes that door, and it mostly rules out server-side AI features.
So the real question is not can they, but do they, and what stops them. Look for plain commitments: no employee browses your entries, access is logged and restricted, your data is never sold, and it is never used to train models without your consent. If a policy is vague on any of these, treat that as a no.
Pensio is server-side, because the emotion extraction and advisors need to read your writing to be useful. The promises in our control are clear: no selling your data, no training without consent, encryption at rest and in transit, and full export and delete whenever you want. If you want files that never leave your machine, the Obsidian sync keeps your plain text local.
People also ask
Do AI journaling apps train their AI on my entries?
Some do unless you opt out. Others promise they never will. Here is how to tell them apart.
Does the AI run on my device or on a server?
Most process your entries on a server; a few run on-device. On-device is more private, server-side is usually smarter.
What is the most private AI journaling app?
The most private is local and offline. Among cloud AI journals, judge by no-train, no-sell, full export.