What should I look out for with AI in research & science?

Never use AI as a source: every reference must be traceable to the original article, as fabricated or wrongly attributed citations are the most common error. Unpublished data, research proposals and peer-review manuscripts are confidential or commercially sensitive, so do not enter them into a consumer account without a data processing agreement, and check whether the provider stores your input or uses it for training (publishers usually prohibit this explicitly for peer review). If you work with personal data from research participants, the GDPR and your own ethics review apply: running models locally or using an EU-hosted tool with data minimisation is then the safe route. Finally, document your search strategy and your AI use: journals and funders increasingly ask for this, and a review must remain reproducible.

Home / Safety / GLM (Z.ai) for research & science

Z.ai (Zhipu AI)

How safe is GLM (Z.ai) for research & science?

Q: How safe is GLM (Z.ai) for research & science?

GLM (Z.ai) has a specific GDPR concern. Parent company Zhipu (Beijing) falls under Chinese data and security law, regardless of where the servers are located. For sensitive data, self-hosting the MIT-licensed weights is the recommended mitigation. Weigh this heavily before using it in research & science. There is a specific GDPR concern — read the details on the page.

GDPR profile for research & scienceCaution

GLM (Z.ai) raises a concrete GDPR concern. Parent company Zhipu (Beijing) falls under Chinese data and security law, wherever the servers are located. For sensitive data, self-hosting the MIT-licensed weights is the recommended mitigation. Weigh this heavily before deploying it in research & science.

Where does GLM (Z.ai) stand in research & science?

Shared spot 24 of 30 options for research & academia (professional tools and general assistants) on GDPR profile. 7 options, like GLM (Z.ai) profile, carry a Caution rating. Each tile is an option we track for this field; click to check.

Strong5

Good6

Limited8

Unknown4

Caution7

Published safeguards

–EU hosting possibleNot known

–No training on your data (business)Not known

✓Self-hostable (on-premise)Yes

The international service Z.ai runs through JINGSHENG HENGXING TECHNOLOGY PTE. LTD. (Singapore); personal data is in principle processed in Singapore. According to the data processing agreement, API content is processed in real time and not stored. GLM-5.2 is open-weight under MIT and can therefore be fully self-hosted or hosted through an EU provider.

How to use GLM (Z.ai) safely

Use the business variant and sign a data processing agreement (DPA).
Do not enter unnecessary personal data into prompts; anonymise where possible.
Ask the provider explicitly where data is stored and processed.
Keep a professional in the loop: never use AI as a source: every reference must be traceable to the original article, as invented or misattributed citations are the most common error.

Stronger or equally strong in research & science

CradleCradle (Amsterdam, the Netherlands and Zürich, Switzerland)

ASReview LABUniversiteit Utrecht (the Netherlands)

KeeniousKeenious (Norway)

ScholarcyEverway Opco Limited / Scholarcy (Antrim, United Kingdom)

SciSpacePubGenius Inc. (Milpitas, United States)

Latest developments

26 October 2026Cloudflare Workers AI: GLM-5.3 leaked 155 answers between customers

Cloudflare reported that GLM-5.3 on Workers AI (@cf/zai-org/glm-5.3) returned data from other customers' requests in 27 answers between 9 August and 2026 September 155. Only prompts above 681,280 tokens were affected; the cause was a KV cache that was too small in the hosting configuration, not the model itself. Cloudflare found no evidence of misuse and fixed it on 9 September. If you used very long prompts containing personal data via Workers AI in that period, assess whether a data breach has occurred. source

Questions

How safe is GLM (Z.ai) for research & science?: GLM (Z.ai) has a concrete GDPR concern. Parent company Zhipu (Beijing) is subject to Chinese data and security legislation, regardless of where the servers are located. For sensitive data, self-hosting the MIT-licensed weights is the recommended mitigation. Weigh this heavily before deploying it in research & science. There is a concrete GDPR concern, read the details on the page.
Does GLM (Z.ai) train on my data?: The international service Z.ai runs through JINGSHENG HENGXING TECHNOLOGY PTE. LTD. (Singapore); personal data is in principle processed in Singapore. According to the data processing agreement, API content is processed in real time and not stored. GLM-5.2 is open-weight under MIT and can therefore be fully self-hosted or hosted through an EU provider.
What should I look out for with AI in research & science?: Never use AI as a source: every reference must be traceable to the original article, as fabricated or wrongly attributed citations are the most common error. Unpublished data, research proposals and peer-review manuscripts are confidential or commercially sensitive, so do not enter them into a consumer account without a data processing agreement, and check whether the provider stores your input or uses it for training (publishers usually prohibit this explicitly for peer review). If you work with personal data from research participants, the GDPR and your own ethics review apply: running models locally or using an EU-hosted tool with data minimisation is then the safe route. Finally, document your search strategy and your AI use: journals and funders increasingly ask for this, and a review must remain reproducible.

Source documents

docs.z.ai z.ai docs.z.ai

Everything about GLM (Z.ai) Best AI for research & science

Summarised by the editorial team from provider documentation · not legal advice

Last checked: 1 November 2026 · How we check

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