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On Wednesday, news quickly spread on social media about a new enabled-by-default Dropbox setting that shares Dropbox data with OpenAI for an experimental AI-powered search feature, but Dropbox says data is only shared if the feature is actively being used. 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.
Wednesday afternoon, Drew Houston, the CEO of Dropbox, apologized for customer confusion in a post on X and wrote, “The third-party AI toggle in the settings menu enables or disables access to DBX AI features and functionality. Neither this nor any other setting automatically or passively sends any Dropbox customer data to a third-party AI service.“
Critics say that 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 ever send user data 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.
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.
This story was updated on December 13, 2023, at 5:35 pm ET with clarifications about when and how Dropbox shares data with OpenAI, as well as statements from Dropbox reps and its CEO.
