No, Microsoft isn’t utilizing your Workplace docs to coach its AI

Microsoft says it isn’t utilizing buyer information from its Microsoft 365 apps to coach its AI fashions. The clarification addresses stories circulating on-line in the previous couple of weeks claiming Microsoft required Phrase and Excel customers to decide out of coaching the corporate’s AI methods.

The confusion arose from a privateness setting in Microsoft Workplace that toggles “non-obligatory linked experiences” — a characteristic that helps customers “seek for on-line photos” or “discover data accessible on-line,” based on Microsoft. This toggle is switched on by default, and fails to say AI coaching within the disclosure. Equally, a Microsoft studying doc posted on October twenty first, 2024 appears to have contributed to the confusion by describing an extended listing of linked experiences in Workplace that “analyze your content material” with out explicitly excluding AI coaching.

“Within the M365 apps, we don’t use buyer information to coach LLMs,” the Microsoft 365 X account mentioned, responding to claims. “This setting solely allows options requiring web entry like co-authoring a doc.” Microsoft’s communications head Frank Shaw additionally chimed in on Bluesky to debunk the claims. 

The Adobe and Microsoft incidents counsel that individuals are more and more involved with their private information being utilized by tech firms to coach their AI fashions with out categorical permission. It’s an comprehensible concern given firms like Meta, X, and Google decide their customers into AI coaching by default, and the huge portions of on-line content material being scraped for that function.