How to stop Dropbox from sharing your personal files with OpenAI

If you have used any of Dropbox‘s AI instruments, a few of your paperwork and files might have been shared with OpenAI.

There’s a legitimate enterprise cause the corporate is working with OpenAI: Dropbox would not have its personal chatbot, so so as to present chatbot providers like summarizing or answering questions on your files, it wants to ship that data to a third-party, after which move alongside the third-party chatbot’s response to you.

However, there should be trigger for buyer concern.

Dropbox AI buyer paperwork move via and are saved on OpenAI’s servers for up to 30 days. And, the “third-party AI” toggle is turned on by default in account settings, in accordance to Dropbox’s FAQs, printed in October, so that you want to flip it off if you do not need your files going to OpenAI.

The information follows a barrage of public dialogue and concern over person privateness amid the uptick in use of consumer-facing AI fashions, like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Bard and Anthropic’s Claude, not to point out firms’ proprietary AI fashions. In August, Zoom modified its phrases of service after it got here below hearth for allowing its AI models to train on some buyer knowledge.

Dropbox’s third-party AI data-sharing solely applies to customers who need Dropbox’s AI options, which is on the market via a lot of Dropbox’s paid plans, or via its Early Access program. According to Dropbox, “solely the content material related to an specific request or command is distributed to our third-party AI companions.”

But, even in the event you’ve opted out, any files shared with one other one that is utilizing Dropbox AI may nonetheless be despatched to OpenAI servers.

In one a part of the FAQs, Dropbox writes that for OpenAI, buyer knowledge “isn’t used to prepare their inner fashions,” however in one other part, the corporate writes that it “will not let our third-party companions prepare their fashions on our person knowledge with out consent.”

Dropbox didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark, together with a query on clarifying whether or not buyer knowledge is “by no means used” to prepare fashions or whether it is solely not used “with out consent.”

Here’s how to flip off use of third-party AI in your Dropbox settings when you’ve got knowledge you do not need being despatched wherever outdoors of Dropbox:

1. Log into Dropbox.
2. Click your account icon within the higher proper nook.
3. Click Settings.
4. Choose the Third-Party AI tab.
5. Toggle the change to “off.”