OpenAI Outlines Consumer Privacy Practices

OpenAI today reiterates its concerns to protect user privacy amid growing concerns over the power of AI systems to infringe on personal data.

The company outlined concrete steps it is taking to safeguard the information entrusted to its AI models by individuals. Chief among them is giving users more control over whether their data gets used to improve OpenAI's products in the future.

"We understand users may not want their data used to improve our models and provide ways for them to manage their data," the post states. Free and paid users of ChatGPT can now easily opt out of having their conversations utilized for training future AI assistants right through their account settings.

Additionally, OpenAI has made clear that any data entered into temporary ChatGPT conversations or submitted via its enterprise API services is automatically excluded from its model training process unless users explicitly choose to share it.

"We want our AI models to learn about the world—not private individuals," the company wrote. "We do not actively seek out personal information to train our models, and we do not use public information on the internet to build profiles about people, advertise to or target them, or to sell user data."

A couple of days back, at WWDC 2024 Apple announced "Apple Intelligence" an AI feature across Apple apps and operating platforms partnering with OpenAI.

Regarding the integration of ChatGPT on Apple devices, Billionaire Elon Musk said that he would ban Apple devices at his companies if the iPhone maker integrated OpenAI at the operating system level.

If Apple integrates OpenAI at the OS level, then Apple devices will be banned at my companies. That is an unacceptable security violation.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 10, 2024

Apple said it built AI with privacy "at the core" and would use a combination of on-device processing and cloud computing to power those features.

On this Elon Musk said, “It's patently absurd that Apple isn't smart enough to make their own AI, yet is somehow capable of ensuring that OpenAI will protect your security & privacy!”

Critics have warned of the privacy minefield created by AI systems' insatiable appetite for data.

But OpenAI maintains its goal is simply to build helpful AI assistants that can engage with the world's knowledge in a generalized manner - not compile dossiers on private individuals.

OpenAI also says it is working to reduce the amount of personal data its AI ingests, train its models to reject requests for private information, and minimize cases where its output could inadvertently include sensitive details.

For users who do wish to opt out entirely, OpenAI has created a separate page to request the deletion of any content like prompts or uploads previously provided to the company.