Dropbox spooks users by sending data to OpenAI for AI search features
Feature turned on by default bothers users who like to keep their files private

On Wednesday, news quickly spread on social media about a new 
enabled-by-default Dropbox setting that shares your Dropbox data with OpenAI 
for an experimental AI-powered search feature. Dropbox says that user data 
shared with third-party AI partners isn't used to train AI models and is 
deleted within 30 days.

Even with assurances of data privacy laid out by Dropbox on an AI privacy FAQ 
page, the discovery that the setting had been enabled by default upset some 
Dropbox users. The setting was first noticed by writer Winifred Burton, who 
shared information about the Third-party AI setting through Bluesky on Tuesday, 
and frequent AI critic Karla Ortiz shared more information about it on X.

Ortiz expressed worries that the data might be trained secretly without 
consent. In its FAQ, Dropbox contradicts this claim, saying, "We won’t let our 
third-party partners train their models on our user data without consent."

Either way, communication about the change could have been clearer. AI 
researcher Simon Willison wrote, "Great example here of how careful companies 
need to be in clearly communicating what's going on with AI access to personal 
data."

So why would Dropbox send user files to OpenAI anyway? In July, the company 
announced an AI-powered feature called Dash that allows AI models to perform 
universal searches across platforms like Google Workspace and Microsoft Outlook.

According to the Dropbox privacy FAQ, the third-party AI opt-out setting is 
part of the "Dropbox AI alpha," which is a conversational interface for 
exploring file contents that involves chatting with a ChatGPT-style bot using 
an "Ask something about this file" feature. To make it work, an AI language 
model similar to the one that powers ChatGPT (like GPT-4) needs access to your 
files.

According to the FAQ, the third-party AI toggle in your account settings is 
turned on by default if "you or your team" are participating in the Dropbox AI 
alpha. Still, multiple Ars Technica staff who had no knowledge of the Dropbox 
AI alpha found the setting enabled by default when they checked.

Right now, the only third-party AI provider for Dropbox is OpenAI, writes 
Dropbox in the FAQ. "Open AI is an artificial intelligence research 
organization that develops cutting-edge language models and advanced AI 
technologies. Your data is never used to train their internal models, and is 
deleted from OpenAI’s servers within 30 days." It also says, "Only the content 
relevant to an explicit request or command is sent to our third-party AI 
partners to generate an answer, summary, or transcript."

Disabling the feature is easy if you prefer not to share Dropbox data with 
OpenAI. Log into your Dropbox account on a desktop web browser, then click your 
profile photo > Settings > Third-party AI. This link may take you to that page 
more quickly. On that page, click the switch beside "Use artificial 
intelligence (AI) from third-party partners so you can work faster in Dropbox" 
to toggle it into the "Off" position.

We reached out to Dropbox for comment, but it did not respond before this story 
was published. We will update this piece when we hear back from the company.

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/12/dropbox-spooks-users-by-sending-data-to-openai-for-ai-search-features/
_______________________________________________
nexa mailing list
nexa@server-nexa.polito.it
https://server-nexa.polito.it/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/nexa

Reply via email to