If you've made use of any of Dropbox's AI capabilities, certain of your records and documents may have been temporarily retained on OpenAI's servers. To some degree, Dropbox's practices are not unfamiliar, but customer documents do go through OpenAI's storage system and are kept for up to a period of 30 days. Furthermore, the "third-party AI" switch is enabled in the default settings of your account. Notwithstanding that you have opted out, any documents you share with someone else utilizing Dropbox AI could still be delivered to the OpenAI systems.
If you have made use of any of Dropbox's AI-based tools, some of your documents and records may have been sent to OpenAI. There is a practical reason why the company has teamed up with OpenAI: since Dropbox does not own its own chatbot, to offer chatbot services such as summarizing or answering queries related to your files, it has to transfer that information to a third party who then returns the chatbot's response to you. This might however still lead to a customer's worries. Documents of Dropbox AI clients are forwarded to and are kept on OpenAI servers for a maximum of 30 days. According to the Dropbox FAQs, published in October, the "third-party AI" button is automatically activated in account settings, which means that if you do not want your files to go to OpenAI, you need to switch it off. This news follows increasing public conversations and considerations around user privacy, as the demand for consumer-directed AI models, such as OpenAI's ChatGPT, Google's Bard and Anthropic's Claude, increases, as well as for companies' proprietary AI designs. In August, Zoom changed its terms of service after experiencing criticism for permitting its AI models to practice on some customer data. Dropbox's third-party AI data sharing is only applicable to customers who prefer Dropbox's AI characteristics, which can be accessed through many of Dropbox's paid plans, or through its Early Access program. According to Dropbox, "only the content related to a specific request or command is sent to our third-party AI associates." However, even if you have opted out, any files shared with another person who is making use of Dropbox AI could still be sent to OpenAI servers. In one part of the FAQs, Dropbox mentions that for OpenAI, customer data "is never used to train their internal models," but in another area, the company states that it "will not allow our third-party partners to train their models on our user data without consent." Dropbox did not promptly respond to CNBC's request for comment, including a query about making clear whether customer data is "never used" to train models or just not used "without consent." To turn off the utilization of third-party AI in your Dropbox settings if you have data you would prefer not to send out of Dropbox: Log into Dropbox.Select your account icon in the upper right corner.Choose Settings.Pick the Third-Party AI tab.Switch the toggle to "off."Don't overlook these accounts from CNBC PRO: five stocks to buy prior to the end of the year, according to the pros; Morgan Stanley fund manager specifies four best stocks to purchase "on the cheap"; JPMorgan selects China stocks to buy now. Alibaba is not on the list; analysts love this self-driving car tech stock and give it more than 400% upside.
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