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. In a statement to Ars Technica, a Dropbox representative said, “The third-party AI toggle is only turned on to give all eligible customers the opportunity to view our new AI features and functionality, like Dropbox AI. It does not enable customers to use these features without notice. Any features that use third-party AI offer disclosure of third-party use, and link to settings that they can manage. Only after a customer sees the third-party AI transparency banner and chooses to proceed with asking a question about a file, will that file be sent to a third-party to generate answers. Our customers are still in control of when and how they use these features.” 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.”

Source: Dropbox spooks users with new AI features that send data to OpenAI when used