You may not even be aware that Dropbox AI alpha is available in your account.
As a leading technology company, Dropbox is practically required to roll out AI features by 2023. This year, the company unveiled a plethora of new AI-powered search tools, which are now in preview for paying customers. It sounds like a great idea—just start typing to get answers about all the files you have crammed into your cloud storage container over the years. But, Dropbox users have discovered there is a catch: in order to test Dropbox AI, you need to grant OpenAI access to your files.
You can use features like Dropbox Dash to ask questions about your files or find items even if you can not remember the file name. From the phrasing, it certainly sounded like Dropbox had built an in-house AI model to scan your files. However, we now know better. When Dropbox revealed its AI preview, there was no mention of OpenAI. In fact, there was no discussion of any third-party AI firm.
There is a new toggle for third-party AI in the Dropbox setting that users have noticed. This feature permits Dropbox’s AI partners to access your files, which is required to integrate them with the model. Dropbox claims that it will only work with companies it has vetted—OpenAI is the only company currently in the program—and that its partners can only keep data for 30 days and are not allowed to use it to train new models.
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(opens in a new tab) Naturally, this setting caused some concern among Dropbox users. Here is Dropbox’s official statement regarding the matter:
Any feature that uses third-party AI offers disclosure of third-party use and links to settings that customers can manage; a file will only be sent to a third-party for answers after a customer sees the third-party AI transparency banner and chooses to proceed with asking a question about it. Our customers are still in control of when and how they use these features. 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.
The toggle is only enabled, according to the company, if you or a member of your team takes part in the Dropbox AI alpha test. But, we can confirm that this is not the case: Ars Technica reports that multiple employees have the toggle enabled even though they are not aware of Dropbox AI, and at ET, we are seeing the data sharing toggle enabled without ever looking for AI features in Dropbox. To check, you will need to log into the Dropbox website and navigate to the far right tab in your settings.
In response, Dropbox CEO Drew Houston stated that the toggle will not passively send any data to OpenAI. We hope this is more accurate than the company’s previous statement that the feature would not activate unless you were using Dropbox AI. Artificial intelligence has become a big deal in the last year, but businesses still need to use caution. Big language models like ChatGPT are only effective because they have ingested a lot of data, and OpenAI has been sued for using copyrighted content to train its models.