Your ChatGPT data automatically trains the AI models – unless you disable this setting
If you rely on ChatGPT to manage aspects of your life and often pass fairly sensitive data to the AI, you may want to make sure you’ve opted out of the “Improve Model for All” setting. Otherwise, OpenAI’s model will train itself on what you tell it.
Before you panic, know that not all data is automatically passed to ChatGPT’s training pool. This feature is disabled by default for temporary chats and business subscriptions. Furthermore, OpenAI makes it clear that the data is kept private and used purely to improve the AI’s understanding of how language is used, rather than being used to create individualized profiles of users for advertising or other nefarious purposes.
But if you have a free or even a premium ChatGPT Plus account, everything you say by default will help train ChatGPT. So how do you turn it off?
Three simple steps
Would you like to opt out of contributing your data to the training of OpenAI’s AI models? Here’s how to do it:
- Start on by clicking on your profile photo in the top right corner of the ChatGPT screen.
- Then you want that go to Settingsand the third option will be Data controls. Click It.
- Once in this submenu, uncheck ‘Improve the model for everyone’ and close the settings.
A more private AI era?
Privacy in AI has always been an important topic, but it has been firmly in the spotlight lately thanks to Apple’s WWDC 2024 keynote.
This is where the company finally unveiled its Apple Intelligence model, and one of its core features is its best-in-class data processing and privacy practices – which Apple claims have been verified by independent third parties.
It also follows Microsoft’s failed rollout of Recall; it’s a Windows Copilot feature where an AI takes screenshots of your screen very often and records everything you do on your PC so it can remind you of your actions later. Useful, sure, but also a potential privacy nightmare.
We expect privacy will only continue to be an important conversation, with users increasingly wary of automatically enabled data sharing settings like ChatGPT’s ‘Improvement Model for All’, but we’ll have to wait and see how AI makers respond.