No Time? Here are the highlights:
• All Microsoft 365 programs are training Copilot on your data unless you turn it off; this includes Outlook and all your contact and calendar data.
• Grammarly is training its AI component on your data unless you turn it off.
• Google Gemini is not training on your data unless you are part of a special group of “Trusted Testers,” but it is best to stay vigilant.
• Overleaf does not automatically enable their AI component; you have to do that manually.
I sat down to write this blog post today and found this at the top of my blank page:
That’s very sobering. Primarily, it’s sobering because I thought I had shut this off over a month ago. Second, it’s sobering because I have known for several months something that Microsoft is not publicizing — they are training Copilot on our documents unless we opt out.
How do I know that? Well, I went to copilot.microsoft.com and asked Copilot, “If I handle customers' documents in Word, will I be violating Datenschutz if I do not turn off the connected experience?” Here’s what it told me:
If you handle customers’ documents in Word and do not turn off the “optional connected experiences,” you might be sharing data with Microsoft that could include personal information. This could potentially raise concerns under German Datenschutz regulations, especially if the data is not properly anonymized or if customers have not consented to this data sharing.
To ensure compliance with Datenschutz regulations, it would be prudent to turn off the “optional connected experiences” feature in Word. This way you can limit the data shared with Microsoft and better protect your customers’ privacy.
Naturally, Copilot kindly offered to tell me how to do this:
If you'd like to turn these experiences off, go to any Microsoft 365 application - such as Word, Excel, or PowerPoint - and go to File > Account > Manage Settings (In Outlook it's under Office Account). There you can disable or enable, either category (or both).
Copilot did not tell me that I had to shut off four different settings on that screen and restart all of my 365 products. But let’s give Copilot a break. It’s not even two years old yet.
In the grand scheme of things, this is not enough to alarm anyone. However, when a business (like mine) is charged with operating under Germany’s acceptably strident data protection laws, the operator of such a business becomes, shall we say, a bit vigilant.
Some of my customers would not really care. I know that. However, some of my customers are breaking new ground in their business or inventing new concepts in their doctoral studies. Therefore, it is incumbent upon me (you know I’m serious when I break out the lawyer talk) to ensure that I am not sharing any of my clients’ texts.
So, clients, why am I bothering you with this? I am bothering you because your staff might also be using Grammarly of other grammar-checking software add-ons to check their English grammar and punctuation and maybe pimp their documents. In Grammarly, you also have to remove permission. In Grammarly, you do this by going to Account > Settings > Feature Customisation, then toggling the AI features off.
I know large multinationals (like some of my clients) don’t have to worry about this because they have IT departments with entire systems for guarding against this kind of issue, but my mid-sized corporate clients might find this information a helpful alert to budding issues. Certainly, every scientist and medical researcher with whom I work can benefit from a closer look at what proprietary information they may be sharing. Luckily, Overleaf is a bit more self-aware than to automatically enable their AI component.
With AI, the user has truly become the product. It is up to us to guard our clients, their secrets, and our contacts and calendars from being used to train AI.
Comentarios