Do you use Dropbox? Do you like your files looked at by openAI?

[thewayne]

Dropbox has an OPT-OUT 'feature' that they've just implemented where any files that you upload to Dropbox for storage or sharing are automatically shared with OpenAI. They claim it is NOT for AI training. YAY?! But then why are they sharing it with the best-known AI company? Doesn't make sense.

Supposedly Dropbox is developing an AI-assisted cross-platform search feature that will let you search for stuff across Dropbox, Outlook email, etc. And this is in preparation for it. However, it is turned on by default. To turn it off, you have to sign on to Dropbox through a web browser and dig into your settings.

The Ars article has instructions and a link on how to deactivate it. Allegedly your data will be discarded before 30 days.

Myself, I stopped using Dropbox a couple of years ago when they capped the number of devices that could link to an account to three. While I liked the ease with which I could share links to a file, I didn't find it worth paying for when there were free options that also had file sharing.

An amusing thing about comments in the Ars article: the number of people closing their Dropbox accounts over this!

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/12/dropbox-spooks-users-by-sending-data-to-openai-for-ai-search-features/

Comments

[white_aster]

My read is that the data is only shared when you use the AI-powered features (because sending the data is required for the AI to answer the questions/requests.) Otherwise, nothing is shared, and nothing is being used to train AI models. I don't love that the global setting is on by default, true, but it isn't a default share, either.

https://help.dropbox.com/view-edit/privacy-settings-dropbox-ai

What information is shared with third-party partners?

Your files within Dropbox are sent to a third-party AI only when you chose to interact with AI powered features. For example, when you ask a question about a file.


We only use third-party technology partners we have vetted. Their software will perform tasks with your information on our behalf, but we remain responsible for the handling of that information. Additionally, we won’t let our third-party partners train their models on our user data without consent.

[thewayne]

Except it's probably going to pre-process all of your files in order to have them indexed to give you fast response times. Apparently it's only available to paid Dropbox subscribers in the USA, it's not on offer to Canadians and anyone in the EU that are covered by the GDPR.

[white_aster]

I'm not an IT person, maybe I'm not getting your point. Are you saying that they don't need to send my files to a third party for the third party to interact with my data? Because they are specifically saying that they will not send my files to the third party until I use the AI-enabled features, and then that they'll delete all data shared after 30 days

I mean, if your point is "they're lying/misleading you about what is they're actually doing," then ok, fair, but that help page definitely seems to be saying "we won't send anything of yours to the AI until you ask us to, and they won't keep it forever".

[thewayne]

There's not full transparency as to what Dropbox is doing with OpenAI, so a lot is conjecture. If they're wanting to use AI to index your files, then something has to read your file content so that you can conversationally ask questions about your file contents and hope for a reasonable answer. You might be able to ask something like 'I forgot Terry's birthday, but I think it's in my email somewhere' and you might get an answer, whereas searching for it could be very tedious. AI could extrapolate various forms of wishing someone happy birthday and the date an email being sent as representing someone's birthday.

I don't know if that's how it will work, we don't have any details at the moment. They're still researching and training pilot projects to see what they can do. Which is true of a lot of AI and LLM projects: no one knows what they can do with them outside of limited frameworks, we're still kind of blindly grasping for what they're useful for.

I don't understand the claim about purging data after 30 days. Let's take Google's ad service, as an example. I use Yahoo Mail in a web browser. I've bought a couple of cameras recently and searched for them from a well-known camera store. So suddenly I'm always seeing camera ads popping up right now. Eventually ads for something else will take their place. But if I ask an AI right now when Terry's birthday was because I realize I forgot it and want to plug it back into my phone's calendar, that's current. His birthday is in October. If I ask again next September, that's well past the 30 day window. Does the AI not have a clue, or does it have to re-read and more importantly, re-process ALL of my email to try and figure out the answer? AI is extremely computationally and electricity intensive, this is its biggest problem and there is a huge race to invent ever more energy conserving AI processing chips.

And I certainly don't have all the answers, I'm just capable of framing things in more confusing ways. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, a lot can be absolutely fatal. :) I know a lot about computers and database, but AI/LLM is entirely out of my league and as I said, Dropbox isn't really saying a lot right now.

[white_aster]

Yeah, I get what you mean about indexing, and it's a good point: how could they make an indexing service that doesn't keep your data past 30 days? I don't know, could they index, keep the files of that operation as of 12/15, then as of 12/16, then as of 12/17, etc. and then just delete the backup indexes after 30 days? That seems like it might make sense: I wouldn't want them to (and they wouldn't need to) keep an index of a file I deleted, for instance. :shruggies?:

I guess my focus in all of this is that though I don't like how the toggle was turned on by default, it still seems that even with the toggle turned on they are SAYING the data doesn't get shared unless I use Dash or any of the other features. Which...is worth what the company's trustworthiness buys. I get it. Companies use weasel words. I am a person who writes things for a living, I get exactly how to do that. But right NOW, they are saying things that don't particularly worry me. Time will tell if they're just being more nefarious than I give them credit for, I guess.

[disneydream06]

Thank goodness I don't use Dropbox. :o
Hugs, Jon

[silveradept]

It's always nice to know what kind of opinion a company has of its users, so the users can decide they don't like being opted in to programs that they don't want to participate in and can leave the company and service. At least, for companies that aren't functionally monopolies.

[thewayne]

Apparently Dropbox is not passing data to OpenAI at this time, but with no notice and at the flick of a switch that can change.  And they lost a lot of customers overnight with this little fiasco.  The thing that I find amusing is that I stopped using them a few years ago - I thought I'd closed my account but it would appear that I didn't - haven't heard boo from them in ages, and suddenly I'm getting marketing emails from them again.  They're in corporate CYA mode over this, trying to get customers back.

[silveradept]

A company that cannot do the basics of reading the room reaps the consequences of that inability.

[thewayne]

Heh.  Yeppers!  Going to be interesting seeing how the stock market reacts and what their next quarterly and annual reporting looks like!