Will Dormann on Nostr: There are the beginning of rumblings that Microsoft is reading all of our stuff in ...
There are the beginning of rumblings that Microsoft is reading all of our stuff in Microsoft office for the purpose of AI training.
Just to try to get ahead of things:
The setting, first called "Let Office connect to online services from Microsoft to provide functionality that's relevant to your usage and preferences.", backed by the registry value ControllerConnectedServicesSourceLocation, is as old as the release of Office 2016 in the year 2015. I didn't bother checking anything older. It lets you do things like search for clipart with Bing.
About 5 years ago, this preference was renamed to "Enable optional connected experiences. (But is still backed by the ControllerConnectedServicesSourceLocation registry value).
Now, somebody just noticed this 5-year-old preference and wrote a Medium article about it, saying that Microsoft is reading all of your documents if it's left enabled.
I cannot definitively state that Microsoft is not training AI on your Office documents. But this preference is NOTHING NEW. If you wish to claim that Microsoft is shoveling out your documents for the sake of AI, you will need to BACK IT UP WITH EVIDENCE. No, pointing to a Medium article written by some random person does not count.
Just to try to get ahead of things:
The setting, first called "Let Office connect to online services from Microsoft to provide functionality that's relevant to your usage and preferences.", backed by the registry value ControllerConnectedServicesSourceLocation, is as old as the release of Office 2016 in the year 2015. I didn't bother checking anything older. It lets you do things like search for clipart with Bing.
About 5 years ago, this preference was renamed to "Enable optional connected experiences. (But is still backed by the ControllerConnectedServicesSourceLocation registry value).
Now, somebody just noticed this 5-year-old preference and wrote a Medium article about it, saying that Microsoft is reading all of your documents if it's left enabled.
I cannot definitively state that Microsoft is not training AI on your Office documents. But this preference is NOTHING NEW. If you wish to claim that Microsoft is shoveling out your documents for the sake of AI, you will need to BACK IT UP WITH EVIDENCE. No, pointing to a Medium article written by some random person does not count.