Comment by AdamH12113 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by AdamH12113 | Hacker News Reader

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For people who can't or won't access Twitter, the setting for individual accounts is here:

https://www.dropbox.com/account/ai

and the setting for team accounts in the admin console is here:

https://www.dropbox.com/team/admin/settings/ai

Ours (for a US business account) was on by default. The text for the setting is:

> Let team members use artificial intelligence (AI) so they can work faster in Dropbox. We only use technology partners we have vetted. Your organization’s data is never used to train their internal models, and is deleted from third-party servers within 30 days.

There's a "learn more" link that goes here:

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

Dropbox claims that they "won’t let our third-party partners train their models on our user data without consent". The page further claims that the participation option is on by default for teams "participating in the Dropbox AI alpha", but I don't think we signed up for any such thing and the option was still on for us. I checked the settings and we are not currently enrolled. I have zero confidence that "consent" to use our data for model training won't also default to opt-in.

The page further states that Dropbox currently has one AI partner -- OpenAI.

To be fair to Dropbox that page also states:

> "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. "

> "If you or your team is participating in the Dropbox AI alpha, the Third-party AI toggle in your account settings is turned On by default. Only the content relevant to an explicit request or command is sent to our third-party AI partners to generate an answer, summary, or transcript."

Basically, its saying "if you use AI tools, we'll send your data to a 3p, but if you don't, we're not".

The issue really is if they turned on a feature in the future "ask a question about this document" and you didn't know it meant that the document was sent over to OpenAI.

> "If you or your team is participating in the Dropbox AI alpha, the Third-party AI toggle in your account settings is turned On by default. Only the content relevant to an explicit request or command is sent to our third-party AI partners to generate an answer, summary, or transcript."

It turns itself back on??? So, what's the point of the toggle then?

False sense of privacy. Dropbox didn’t have the best history in keeping your files private

I see no such setting, for my free personal account which is currently overfull and not syncing due to having previously had some temporary promotional space above my current limit. Is this setting not present for everyone? If relevant, I am currently in Germany, although my account was created in either the US or Canada (I forget which).

I'm in the U.S. and don't see it on my free account either. I also don't have early access features turned on, so I wonder if it could be related to that. [Or, as is mentioned in some other comments, maybe free accounts don't have the option because they can't access AI powered features.]

Same here.

I'm in UK and I also don't have it.

I suspect there is a Great Deal of Precautionary Rationale (eh) protecting the Eurosphere from the worst privacy abuses.

I'm in the US and don't see it either.

Oddly enough, I am in the UK - and I do have it, but it was already turned off when I went there. I wonder if things have changed, or there are some canary releases of the box... or am I just completely unaware my account isn't considered a UK-based account?

In the Twitter post the OP says he is based in the EU.

I’m in the UK and I can see it. It was off.

It has to be on initially for later plausible denial..

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