Dropbox hides AI sharing amid accusations of user data leakage with OpenAI

Users of Dropbox, a file-hosting service, are concerned that the company is sharing their data and files with OpenAI.

The concern stems from the platform's collaboration with OpenAI to launch an AI feature for paying subscribers. This is concerning, given that Dropbox publicly stated it's not sharing user data and suggests the company is not committed to addressing privacy concerns with its OpenAI partnership.

Since Dropbox doesn't have a chatbot, the company has collaborated with OpenAI to help users "answer questions and summarize large files," according to the site's help page. To accomplish this, Dropbox must send your files to OpenAI so it can send ChatGPT's response back to you.

Dropbox denies the accusations

This information is stored on OpenAI's servers for only 30 days. However, the concern is that this feature is toggled on automatically. On Dec. 13, Amazon CTO Werner Vogels posted on X (formerly Twitter), informing users how to disable the feature.

Tweet may have been deleted

Dropbox CEO Drew Houston responded to Vogels denying accusations that the company was sending users' data to OpenAI. In another post, Houston stated that "Third-party AI services are only used when customers actively engage with Dropbox AI features."

Tweet may have been deleted

Additionally, a spokesperson told CNBC that "customer data is not used to train or fine-tune OpenAI’s language models."

However, reports from Dropbox users suggest that after this exchange, the option to turn off AI features was hidden. This means that the AI features were not only still on by default, but the option to toggle it off is being hidden from users as well.

'The AI third-party toggle is only visible to users who have access to our AI features," said a company spokesperson to Mashable through email. "To reiterate, neither this nor any other setting automatically or passively sends any Dropbox customer data to a third-party AI service."