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Updates to GitHub Copilot interaction data usage policy
- djmashko2 7mo ago> Content from your issues, discussions, or private repositories at rest. We use the phrase “at rest” deliberately because Copilot does process code from private repositories when you are actively using Copilot. This interaction data is required to run the service and could be used for model training unless you opt out. Sounds like it's even likely to train on content from private repositories. This feels like a bit of an overstep to me.
- mt42or 7mo agoIs it legal ? Surely not in any EU countries.
- mentalgear 7mo agoAt least one instance where it was enabled in EU countries as well.
- okanat 7mo agoDoes it even matter? They trained AI on obviously copyrighted and even pirated content. If this change is legally significant and a legal breach, the existence of all models and all AI businesses also is illegal.
- 0x3f 7mo agoIt might or might not be legal, but it seems materially worse to screw over your direct customers than to violate the social-contracty nature of copyright law. But hey ho if you're not paying then you're the product, as ever was.
- section_me 7mo agoIf I'm paying, which I am, I want to have to opt-in, not opt-out, Mario Rodriguez / @mariorod needs to give his head a wobble. What on earth are they thinking...
- sph 7mo ago> What on earth are they thinking... @mariorod's public README says one of his focuses is "shaping narratives and changing \"How we Work\"", so there you go.
- section_me 7mo ago"shaping narratives", sounds like they follow the methodologies of a current president
- fmjrey 7mo agoTranslation: more alignment with Microsoft practices
- wenldev 7mo ago[dead]
- sph 7mo agoThanks to Github and the AI apocalypse, all my software is now stored on a private git repository on my server. Why would I even spend time choosing a copyleft license if any bot will use my code as training data to be used in commercial applications? I'm not planning on creating any more opensource code, and what projects of mine still have users will be left on GH for posterity. If you're still serious about opensource, time to move to Codeberg.
- thesmart 7mo agoYeah, I'm guessing that probably because in their TOS you grant them some license work-around for running the service, which can mean anything.
- midasz 7mo agoI'm in my happy space selfhosting forgejo and having a runner on my own hardware
- heavyset_go 7mo agoMade the same choice, my open source projects with users are in maintenance mode or archived. New projects are released via SaaS, compiled artifacts or not at all. I scratch my open source itch by contributing to existing language and OS projects where incremental change means eventually having to retrain models to get accurate inference :)
- Deukhoofd 7mo agoSo basically they want to retain everyone's full codebases? > The data used in this program may be shared with GitHub affiliates, which are companies in our corporate family including Microsoft So every Microsoft owned company will have access to all data Copilot wants to store?
- mentalgear 7mo ago> On April 24 we'll start using GitHub Copilot interaction data for AI model training unless you opt out. Review this update and manage your preferences in your GitHub account settings. Now "Allow GitHub to use my data for AI model training" is enabled by default. Turn it off here: https://github.com/settings/copilot/features https://github.com/settings/copilot/features Do they have this set on business accounts also by default? If so, this is really shady.
- archb 7mo agoInterestingly, it is disabled by default for me.
- gpm 7mo agoMe too, which is making me wonder if they're planning on silently flipping this setting on April 24th (making it impossible to opt out in advance).
- spiderfarmer 7mo agoIs it because I'm in the EU?
- paularmstrong 7mo agoI'm in the US and it's off for me. I believe I've previously opted out of everything copilot related in the past if there was anything.
- gpm 7mo agoI'm in Canada, so not only the EU at least.
- martinwoodward 7mo agoWe are not. The reason we wanted to announce early was so that folks had plenty of time to opt-out now. We've also added the opt-out setting even if you don't use Copilot so that you can opt-out now before you forget and then if you decide to use Copilot in the future it will remember your preference.
- indigodaddy 7mo agoChecked and mine was already on disabled. Don't remember if I previously toggled it or not..
- martinwoodward 7mo agoIf you previously opted out of the setting allowing GitHub to collect data for product improvements, your preference has been retained here. We figured if you didn't want that then you definitely wouldn't want this..
- baobabKoodaa 7mo ago(oops)
- tech234a 7mo agoIt’s currently March
- baobabKoodaa 7mo agoOops. Thank you for correcting me!
- TZubiri 7mo agoTwo issues with this: 1- Vulnerabilities, Secrets can be leaked to other users. 2- Intellectual Property, can also be leaked to other users. Most smart clients won't opt-out, they will just cut usage entirely.
- matltc 7mo agoThat's me. Frankly, looking at just uninstalling VSCode because Copilot straight-up gets in the way of so much, and they stopped even bothering with features that are not related to it (with one exception of native browser in v112, which, admittedly, is great)
- nine_k 7mo agoVSCode can be cleaned: https://github.com/VSCodium/vscodium https://github.com/VSCodium/vscodium (I prefer Emacs anyway, but VSCode is a worthy tool.)
- rvz 7mo ago> From April 24 onward, interaction data—specifically inputs, outputs, code snippets, and associated context—from Copilot Free, Pro, and Pro+ users will be used to train and improve our AI models unless they opt out. Now is the time to run off of GitHub and consider Codeberg or self hosting like I said before. [0] [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22867803 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22867803
- 0x3f 7mo agoCodeberg doesn't support non OSS and I'd rather just have one 'git' thing I have to know for both OSS and private work. So it's not a great option, IMO. Self-hosting also for other reasons. I'm not sure there are any good GitHub alternatives. I don't trust Gitlab either. Their landing page title currently starts with "Finally, AI". Eek.
- eipi10_hn 7mo agoMaybe sourcehut? https://sourcehut.org https://sourcehut.org
- 0x3f 7mo agoIt's an option but I can't really take the platform seriously when the owner removes content based on his personal whims. He currently removes crypto projects because of their 'social ills'. I don't work on crypto, but he might start deleting AI projects for the same reason, say.
- diath 7mo ago> This approach aligns with established industry practices "others are doing it too so it's ok"
- theshrike79 7mo agoAckshually Anthropic is opt-in AND they give you discounts if you enable it
- cma 7mo agoAnthropic puts up random prompts defaulting to enabled to trick you into accidentally enabling.
- nodar86 7mo agoWhat kind of discounts? I have never heard of this
- stingraycharles 7mo agoIt’s opt-out, not opt-in, at least for Claude Desktop and Claude Code, unless you use the API.
- stefankuehnel 7mo agoIf you scroll down to "Allow GitHub to use my data for AI model training" in GitHub settings, you can enable or disable it. However, what really gets me is how they pitch it like it’s some kind of user-facing feature: Enabled = You will have access to the feature Disabled = You won't have access to the feature As if handing over your data for free is a perk. Kinda hilarious.
- petcat 7mo agoI guess the "perk" is that maybe their models get retrained on your data making them slightly more useful to you (and everyone else) in the future? idk
- a1o 7mo agoI went to check on this and I have everything copilot related disabled and in the two bars that measure usage my Copilot Chat usage was somehow in 2%, how is this possible? Before anyone comes to me to sell me on AI, this is on my personal account, I have and use it in my business account (but it is a completely different user account), I just make it a point to not use it in my personal time so I can keep my skills sharp.
- hakunin 7mo agoDoes Github count it as copilot chat usage when you use AI search form on their website, I wonder?
- a1o 7mo agoI wonder if that’s it! I occasionally do some code search on GitHub and then remember it doesn’t work well and go back to searching in the IDE. I usually need to look into not the main branch because I do a lot of projects that have a develop branch where things actually happen. But that would explain so I guess this is it.
- saratogacx 7mo agoIf you're taking about the quota bar. That is only measuring your premium request usage (models with a #.#x multiplier next to the name). If you only use the free models and code completion you won't actually consume any "usage". If you use AI code review that consumes a single request (now). Same with the Github Copilot web chat, if you use a free model, it doesn't count, if you use a premium model you get charged the usage cost.
- SilentEditor 7mo ago[flagged]
- TZubiri 7mo agoIf this doesn't sound bad enough, it's possible that Copilot is already enabled. As we know this kind of features are pushed to users instead of being asked for. Maybe it's already active in our accounts and we don't realize it, so our code will be used to train the AI. Now we can't be sure if this will happen or not, but a company like GitHub should be staying miles away from this kind of policy. I personally wouldn't use GitHub for private corporate repositories. Only as a public web interface for public repos.
- hmate9 7mo agoFor what it's worth they're not trying to hide this change at all and are very upfront about it and made it quite simple to opt out.
- matltc 7mo agoThey didn't even link the setting in their email. They didn't even name it specifically, just vaguely gestured toward it. Dark patterns, but that's Microslop for ya
- ncr100 7mo agoThey do not make it very simple to opt out. That is false. On Android for instance I invite you to use the GitHub app and modify your opt-in or opt outside settings... You will find that nothing works on the settings page once you actually find the settings page after digging through a couple of layers and scrolling about 2 ft.
- hoten 7mo agoWhy is there no cancel copilot subscription option here?. Docs say there should be... Mobile https://github.com/settings/billing/licensing https://github.com/settings/billing/licensing EDIT: https://docs.github.com/en/copilot/how-tos/manage-your-account/view-and-change-your-copilot-plan#canceling-your-copilot-plan https://docs.github.com/en/copilot/how-tos/manage-your-accou... > If you have been granted a free access to Copilot as a verified student, teacher, or maintainer of a popular open source project, you won’t be able to cancel your plan. Oh. jeez.
- pizzafeelsright 7mo agoI am not certain this is that big of a deal outside of "making AI better". At this point, is there any magic in software development? If you have super-secret-content is a third party the best location?
- thesmart 7mo agoHow about "no." You may be okay giving away your individual rights, including to copyright, but I am not.
- danelski 7mo agoThey've had ample access to the final output - our code, but they still hope with enough data on HOW we work they can close the agentic gap and finally get those stinky, lazy humans that demand salary out of the loop.
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- OtherShrezzing 7mo agoIt’s not clear to me how GitHub would enforce the “we don’t use enterprise repos” stuff alongside “we will use free tier copilot for training”. A user can be a contributor to a private repository, but not have that repository owner organisation’s license to use copilot. They can still use their personal free tier copilot on that repository. How can enterprises be confident that their IP isn’t being absorbed into the GH models in that scenario?
- martinwoodward 7mo agoWe do not train on the contents from any paid organization’s repos, regardless of whether a user is working in that repo with a Copilot Free, Pro, or Pro+ subscription. If a user’s GitHub account is a member of or outside collaborator with a paid organization, we exclude their interaction data from model training.
- 8cvor6j844qw_d6 7mo agoFor private repositories under a personal account, if the repo owner has opted out of model training but a collaborator has not, would the collaborator's Copilot interactions with that repo still be used for training?
- lmc 7mo agoThank you for clarifying this.
- danelski 7mo agoQuite simply, that's just a matter of the corporate internal policy and its (lack of) enforcement. This problem is just a subset of the wider IP breach with some people happily feeding their work documents into the free tier of ChatGPT.
- OtherShrezzing 7mo agoSo, how does this work with source-available code, that’s still licensed as proprietary - or released under a license which requires attribution? If someone takes that code and pokes around on it with a free tier copilot account, GitHub will just absorb it into their model - even if it’s explicitly against that code’s license to do so?
- danelski 7mo agoMost of the new culture and website contents is under full copyright. How much of an obstacle was that to these companies?
- semiinfinitely 7mo agoill be moving off github now
- thesmart 7mo agoI'm ready to abandon Github. Enschitification of the world's source infrastructure is just a matter of time.
- _pdp_ 7mo agoMicrosoft doing dumb things once again. Who in their right mind will opt into sharing their code for training? Absolutely nobody. This is just a dark pattern. Btw, even if disabled, I have zero confidence they are not already training on our data. I would also recommend to sprinkle copyright noticed all over the place and change the license of every file, just in case they have some sanity checks before your data gets consumed - just to be sure.
- pred_ 7mo agoWhat is the legal basis of this in the EU? Ignoring the fact they could end up stealing IP, it seems like the collected information could easily contain PII, and consent would have to be > freely given, specific, informed and unambiguous. In order to obtain freely given consent, it must be given on a voluntary basis.
- LadyCailin 7mo agoI actually don’t seem to have this option on my GitHub settings page, which leads me to wonder if this only applies to Americans.
- LauraMedia 7mo agoI actually did have to manually disable this from Germany, so it might be a different reason you don't have it?
- LadyCailin 7mo agoDunno! I would have expected Germany and Norway to be the same.
- spartanatreyu 7mo agoI have the setting in Australia. I'd be curious to see which countries are affected
- rennokki 7mo agoIt breaks GDPR easily: GDPR enforces you to comply with opt-out by default, no workaround by prefilling before hitting submit. While some think this applies only to personal data, then yes. But it takes only one line of code to use my phone number for testing while I test locally a register form in the application I'm developing. Once it gets sent to Copilot I can threaten with legal action if they are not taking it down.
- pred_ 7mo ago
- Mooshux 7mo ago[dead]
- liquid_thyme 7mo agoThey use data from the poor student tier, but arguably, large corporates and businesses hiring talented devs are going to create higher quality training data. Just looking at it logically, not that I like any of this...
- bustah 7mo ago[flagged]
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- rectang 7mo agoI just checked my Github settings, and found that sharing my data was "enabled". This setting does not represent my wishes and I definitely would not have set it that way on purpose. It was either defaulted that way, or when the option was presented to me I configured it the opposite of how I intended. Fortunately, none of the work I do these days with Copilot enabled is sensitive (if it was I would have been much more paranoid). I'm in the USA and pay for Copilot as an individual. Shit like this is why I pay for duck.ai where the main selling point is that the product is private by default.
- david_allison 7mo agoI have GitHub Copilot Pro. I don't believe I signed up for it. I neither use it nor want it. 1. A lot of settings are 'Enabled' with no option to opt out. What can I do? 2. How do I opt out of data collection? I see the message informing me to opt out, but 'Allow GitHub to use my data for AI model training' is already disabled for my account.
- martinwoodward 7mo agoHey David - if you want to send me (martinwoodward at github.com) details of your GitHub account I can take a look. At a guess I suspect you are one of the many folks who qualified for GitHub Copilot Pro for free as a maintainer of a popular open source project. Sounds like you are already opted out because you'd previously opted out of the setting allowing GitHub to collect this data for product improvements. But I can check that. Note, it's only _usage_ data when using Copilot that is being trained on. Therefore if you are not using Copilot there is no usage data. We do not train on private data at rest in your repos etc.
- david_allison 7mo agoCheers!
- QuadrupleA 7mo agoFun fact: Copilot gives you no way to ignore sensitive files with API keys, passwords, DB credentials, etc.: https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/11254#discussioncomment-12369008 https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/11254#discussi... So by default you send all this to Microsoft by opening your IDE.
- malnourish 7mo agoI swear I just set up enterprise and org level ignore paths.
- veverkap 7mo agoYeah, it's a Copilot Business/Enterprise feature
- 0xbadcafebee 7mo agoSeparate fun fact: Gemini CLI blocks env vars with strings like 'AUTH' in the name. They have two separate configuration options that both let you allow specific env vars. Neither work (bad vibe coding). Tried opening an issue and a PR, and two separate vibe-coding bots picked up my issue and wrote PRs, but nobody has looked at them. Bug's still there, so can't do git code signing via ssh agent socket. Only choice is to do the less-secure, not-signed git commits. On top of that, Gemini 3 refuses to refactor open source code, even if you fork it, if Gemini thinks your changes would violate the spirit of the intent of the original developers in a safety/security context. Even if you think you're actually making it more secure, but Gemini doesn't, it won't write your code.
- cebert 7mo agoI wish GitHub would focus on making their service reliable instead of Copilot and opting folks into their data being stolen for training.
- latand6 7mo agoWhy won't people like to make the models better? Aren't we all getting the benefit after all?
- danelski 7mo agoThat's akin to being grateful for your local shop owner that they allowed you to sweep the floor for other customers.
- latand6 7mo agoPlease don’t strawman me, I asked completely different question. It’s not about being grateful or something, but that many people (devs) are too concerned about their code being stolen as if they’ve come up with something unique and the LLMs are some kind of database (which it isn’t). At the end of the day we’re going to be using AI to write all the code, many of us already doing that. And if some GitHub copilot model would be better - we’re getting more quality code that is generally available for next pretraining runs (for your and other models). Some would even switch to copilot if it’s good. What do you think about it?
- sayamqazi 7mo agoIf something is mine by right, no matter how little or lot worth it has noone shoule be allowed to force/trick me to donate it. It should just be my choice.
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- manudaro 7mo ago[dead]
- iam_circuit 7mo ago[dead]
- stefanos82 7mo agoSerious question: let's say I host my code on this platform which is proprietary and is for my various clients. Who can guarantee me that AI won't replicate it to competitors who decide to create something similar to my product?
- halfcat 7mo agoIf the code is ever visible to anyone else ever, you have no guarantee. If it’s actually valuable, you have to protect it the same way you’d protect a pile of gold bars. What does “my code...for my clients” mean (is it yours or theirs)? If it’s theirs let them house it and delegate access to you. If they want to risk it being, ahem...borrowed, that’s their business decision to make. If it’s yours, you can host it yourself and maintain privacy, but the long tail risk of maintaining it is not as trivial as it seems on the surface. You need to have backups, encrypted, at different locations, geographically distant, so either you need physical security, or you’re using the cloud and need monitoring and alerting, and then need something to monitor the monitor. It’s like life. Freedom means freedom from tyranny, not freedom from obligation. Choosing a community or living solo in the wilderness both come with different obligations. You can pay taxes (and hope you’re not getting screwed, too much), or you can fight off bears yourself, etc.
- ComputeLeap 7mo ago[dead]
- Heliodex 7mo agoFinally. The option for me to enable Copilot data sharing has been locked as disabled for some time, so until now I couldn't even enable it if I wanted to.
- badthingfactory 7mo agoI appreciated the notification at the top of the screen because it prompted me to disable every single copilot feature I possibly could from my account. I also appreciated Microsoft for making Windows 11 horrible so I could fall back in love with Linux again.
- jmhammond 7mo agoMine was defaulted to disabled. I’m on the Education pro plan (academic), so maybe that’s different than personal?
- marak830 7mo agoAs it's enabled by default, does that mean everything has already been siphoned off and now I'm just closing the gate behind the animals escaping? Shit like this shouldn't be allowed.
- sbinnee 7mo agoBold move. Who uses Copilot these days? Unless they have free credit I mean.
- pugchat 7mo ago[dead]
- phendrenad2 7mo agoSo I do all the work of thinking about how to do something, and as soon as I tell Copilot about it, not it's in the training data and anyone can ask the LLM and it'll tell them the solution I came up with? Great. I'm going to cancel.
- explodes 7mo agoWe all knew Microsoft was going to destroy GitHub eventually when it was first bought. How much longer do you want to tolerate the enshittification? How much longer CAN you tolerate it?
- ncr100 7mo agoOn my Android phone I was able to change the setting using Firefox by logging into GitHub and not allowing it to launch the GitHub app. I was unable to change the setting when I used the GitHub app to open up the web page in a container.. button clicks weren't working. Quite frustrating.
- patrickRyu 7mo ago[flagged]
- hikaru_ai 7mo ago[dead]
- etothet 7mo agoThe fact that this is on by default, especially for paid accounts and even more especially for organizations, where certain types of privacy is sometimes mandated by the industry your business is in, is ridiculous. There should also be a much easier one-click to opt out without having to scroll way down on the settings page.
- tuananh 7mo agomaking this option opt-in by default is a very shady choice, GitHub.
- ryguz 7mo ago[dead]
- greatgib 7mo agoAnd something important, that is leaking from the phrasing of their blog post, is that it is not really "Github" that wants to suck all your data "prompts, code, context, documents", ... but it is "Microsoft"!
- abdelmon 7mo ago[flagged]
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- robeym 7mo agoThere are several settings in my account relating to Copilot that are locked/enabled with a shield and key icon next to it. Any idea how to disable these settings? It's on the same settings/copilot/features page.
- dartf 7mo agoI don't see an option to opt-out? Is it US only thing?
- xtremehdtv 7mo ago[dead]
- kevcampb 7mo agoThis is terrifying. Github was the one provider I did not expect to make such an action. We're now playing whack-a-mole with vendors to try and ensure that our company IP doesn't end up being used to train a model.
- AlexeyBelov 7mo ago> Github was the one provider I did not expect to make such an action There is no Github anymore in any meaningful way. It's Microsoft. Github doesn't have a CEO anymore.
- tuhgdetzhh 7mo ago[flagged]
- nhkjhh 7mo agonig
- aimemobe 7mo ago[flagged]