Data usage and enterprise controls

This guide provides an overview of the data shared with Google when you use AI innovations in Chrome DevTools and explains the options available for both enterprise administrators and individual users to control these features.

Feature availability and configuration

The availability and data usage settings for AI assistance in DevTools vary depending on the user type. The following table summarizes the default behavior and configuration options. For more details on how to configure AI assistance see the controlling AI features section.

Customer category Default state Allow feature without improving AI models Disable feature
Consumers Allow AI features and improve AI models. n/a Supported by settings
Workspace Education Allow AI features without improving AI models. Supported with policy. Supported with policy.
Chrome Enterprise Allow AI features without improving AI models. Supported with policy. Supported with policy.
Third-party managed Allow AI features and improve AI models. Supported with policy. Supported with policy.

Data usage and privacy

This section details what data is collected when you use AI assistance in DevTools. This guide, along with the Google Privacy Policy, describes how AI in Chrome DevTools handles your data.

To help with quality and improve our products, human reviewers may read, annotate, and process input data, generated output, related feature usage information, and your feedback. Don't include sensitive (for example, confidential) or personal information that can be used to identify you or others in your prompts or feedback. Your data will be stored in a way where Google cannot tell who provided it and can no longer fulfill any deletion requests and will be retained for up to 18 months. We may not collect data to improve our product if your Google Account is managed by an organization.

General data collection

When you trigger an AI assistance feature, DevTools collects the following data to provide the service:

  • Your prompt: The text and any images or screenshots you provide.
  • Google Account information: Your credentials are used for authentication.
  • User feedback: Your ratings (thumbs up or down) on the AI's responses.

Context-specific data collection

Depending on the context where you use AI assistance, DevTools may also send additional information from the inspected page or file to provide a relevant response. This data is collected transparently when needed.

Console Insights

For questions about console messages, the AI receives a subset of the following data:

  • Message content
  • Level of the log message
  • Stack trace associated with the log message
  • Network request headers associated with the log message, but excluding cookies, authentication, custom (x-*) headers, and the network response body
  • Code snippets relevant to the stack trace, extracted from the web application

CSS panel

When you ask for help with CSS, the AI may request and evaluate additional information from the inspected page, including:

  • DOM structure and contents
  • CSS styling information

Network panel

For questions about network requests, the AI receives a subset of the request and response data:

  • The request URL
  • A subset of request and response headers. The following headers are always excluded:
    • Custom headers (starting with X-)
    • Cookie and Set-Cookie
    • Authorization
  • Response status code
  • Timing data
  • Request initiator chain

Sources panel (explaining code)

When you ask the AI to explain a source file, it receives:

  • Filename and URL
  • The content of the file (or a fragment of it)
  • Source map URLs, if available

Performance panel

When using the Generate label or Ask AI features for a performance profile, the AI receives data about the selected call frame:

  • name: The function or operation name (for example, initializeApp).
  • url: The script file's URL.
  • dur: Total duration of the call frame in milliseconds.
  • self: Self-time of the call frame in milliseconds.
  • children: An array of child call frames.

When you use Ask AI, the agent can also request additional data from the performance trace file, including page load timings, network requests, and styling information.

Changes panel (generating commit messages)

When the AI generates a commit message from the Changes panel, it uses the source code (file names and content) from the local workspace folder you have mapped into DevTools.

Persist changes in a workspace

Source code (file names and content of files) of the local workspace folder that the user has mapped into DevTools.

Control AI features

For managed Chrome environments, the availability of all AI assistance features is controlled by the DevToolsGenAiSettings enterprise policy.

Individual users can also use this policy to disable the features on their machine.

Enterprise policy options

You can configure the DevToolsGenAiSettings policy with one of the following three options:

  • 0 (Allow feature and improve models): AI features are enabled. Google is permitted to use relevant data (prompts, content, feedback) to improve its AI models. This is the default for consumers and third-party managed browsers.
  • 1 (Allow feature without improving models): AI features are enabled, but Google won't use user data to improve its models. This is the default for Chrome Enterprise and Workspace Education users.
  • 2 (Do not allow feature): All AI assistance features and UI entry points are completely disabled.

How to configure the policy

Enterprise users

Enterprise administrators can configure generative AI settings for their organization through the Google Admin console.

For more information on managing these policies, refer to the following resources:

In managed Chrome environments availability of AI assistance and Console Insights is controlled by the DevToolsGenAiSettings Enterprise policy.

Unmanaged users

Unmanaged users may use the same policy to disable AI innovations on their machine and remove Ask AI context menu items.

  1. Stop all instances of Chrome
  2. Set recommended policy
    1. macOS: Run $ defaults write com.google.Chrome DevToolsGenAiSettings -integer 2
    2. Linux: Create policies.json in/etc/opt/chrome/policies/recommended and add {"DevToolsGenAiSettings": 2}
    3. Windows: In regedit.exe, navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Policies\Google\Chrome. Set the key DevToolsGenAiSettings to dword:00000002
  3. Start Chrome and go to chrome://policy to verify DevToolsGenAiSettings has a Policy Value of 2.