Chat draws its answers from whichever documents you've made available to it. Below: how to get files in, and how to decide which ones a given conversation may reach.
Adding a source
Where: Chat › right panel › Add sources
Files can be added mid-conversation, without going anywhere else.
- Press Add sources in the right panel.
- Select a file from your computer, or bring one in from Google Drive if that account is connected.
- Give the AI models access to your files at the prompt.
- Allow the upload and embedding to complete. Embedding is what turns a document into something the AI can read, so hold off on questions for a moment.
The sources panel
- Add sources. Upload from this machine, or import from an account you've connected.
- Select All. Its counter shows how many files are currently visible to this chat.
- A single source. Clear its tick and this conversation leaves it alone.
- Filter. Cuts a long list down by tag.
Choosing what a conversation can see
Where: Chat › right panel › tick boxes
Those checkboxes are why the panel exists. Everything starts ticked, meaning the AI searches the lot. Clear the ones you'd prefer excluded and this conversation can no longer reach them — handy when something in storage is irrelevant to the question at hand, or when you'd simply rather it stayed out of the frame.
Clearing a tick applies to this conversation and no other. The file remains in your Private Data Storage and stays available elsewhere. If you want the AI kept away from your stored files entirely, that's AI Data Access Control in Settings.