Microsoft To World: We Don’t Use Word And Excel To Gather Your Data To Train Our AI Models

You might recall that I posted a story on Word and Excel using your data to train Microsoft’s AI. Well, Microsoft has finally come out and said something about this via Twitter:

That’s seems on the surface to be a definitive statement. But The Register decided to go down the rabbit hole on this:

Microsoft’s Connected Experiences option in its productivity suite has been causing consternation amid accusations that the default setting might allow Microsoft to train AI models using customers’ Word and Excel documents and other data.

The Windows giant vehemently denies the claims. A spokesperson told The Register: “In Microsoft 365 consumer and commercial applications, Microsoft does not use customer data to train large language models without your permission.”

We asked Microsoft what it meant by “permission” and if the permission was opt-in or opt-out, and the IT titan has yet to respond.

Maybe I am reading too much into this. But you would think that if you were doing nothing wrong, you’d want to get that out there quickly. Thus the fact that Microsoft hasn’t responded to the question of what they meant by “permission” and whether it was opt in or opt out is curious. I’ll be watching this because I don’t think that this story is over and done with by a long shot.

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