Is the absence of fine-tuning on retrieved documents a...

Privacy in RAG systems involves two distinct claims: revocability and confidentiality. The absence of fine-tuning on retrieved documents only addresses the former, ensuring that information is not permanently baked into the model weights. However, it does nothing to prevent unauthorized users from accessing sensitive data during the retrieval process. Therefore, a robust privacy strategy must include access-control filters at the retrieval stage to ensure users only see documents they are authorized to access.