AI in an SME: What Data Protection Actually Requires

Almost every AI conversation in a Swiss business opens with the same question: where does our data end up? It is a fair one. It usually gets asked too late, once the tool has been chosen and nobody wants to go back.

Three questions settle most of it. Which data actually leaves the building? Often less than feared, sometimes a good deal more. Where is it processed, and can that be fixed in a contract? And is it reused for training? With business agreements the answer is usually no, though it belongs in writing rather than in someone's memory.

Settling these three up front costs a week. Settling them afterwards costs half the build a second time. And the plainest answer often carries furthest: let the system compute where the data already sits.