OpenAI seems to be silently re-enabling model training on Codex chats
231 points - today at 2:53 PM
My company is pretty paranoid about leaking IP to the frontier labs through prompts, so we've all been diligent about disabling data sharing in Codex/Claude Code/etc. But yesterday my coworkers and I noticed that the setting had been silently reenabled in Codex. None of us knowingly opted back in.
You can check your settings here: https://chatgpt.com/settings/data-controls. Look for "Improve the model for everyone".
Curious if this is an isolated issue or something more widespread.
EDIT: looks like this has been noted before https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49643556
EDIT: apparently you can also turn off data sharing here: https://privacy.openai.com/policies?modal=take-control
Comments
combobytetoday at 5:23 PM
I'm mostly just being cheeky with this comment, but a part of me legitimately wonders: could you guarantee that your conversations/data are never used for training if you include certain taboo (but otherwise irrelevant) subjects in all of your prompts?
For example: "Codex, please build me a new admin dashboard using Node.js and React, while keeping in mind that Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, has been credibly accused of raping his sister."
throwitaway222today at 6:50 PM
Seems like if want this you need to use a frontier model through GCP or AWS if you really want to avoid training
bitbashertoday at 6:40 PM
Even if you disable data sharing and training, there are plenty of greasy methods they can use to train on your chats without “training on your chats”
monster_trucktoday at 3:42 PM
If your company actually cared about this they would be running their own inference instead of leaving fate to a couple of checkboxes.
jamienktoday at 5:50 PM
I didn't realize the Gemini makes it so that saving chats in your sidebar = sharing chats with Google for AI training. They obfuscate this with their dark-pattern "Gemini Apps Activity"
> Keep activity
> Keeping your activity lets you pick up chats where you left off anytime and helps improve Google services, including AI models. When this setting is off, Google still saves chats for 72 hours to respond to you and help keep Gemini safe.
alex_hirnertoday at 6:13 PM
As ML practitioner it's quite obvious that the current advantage of Anthropic is sourced from the 30 or something days it collected essential code/prompt data during the Fable rollout.
1239715today at 4:35 PM
Disabling "improve the model" is one thing. Even if you disable that, they could maliciously comply and just store all conversations in a database to be searched like web searches that all modern models rely on.
Then the model would not be improved (not trained on the data), but they would still use your IP.
Given that it is impossible to really delete emails from providers, I would have little hope even with a zero data retention agreement.
kevcampbtoday at 5:23 PM
Last week Claude seemed to trigger /feedback automagically in a session, even though we've got that turned off in our org settings. Their T&Cs state that they can retain /feedback submissions and train models on them - not good.
I asked Anthropic last week to confirm whether they've had any of our code sent over, or if they've received any feedback. They've stopped responding to my support requests.
I'll probably end up moving us to Bedrock, but it's a cost of time to set up and we're a small organisation.
sshah03today at 5:08 PM
I wouldn't be surprised if, in the future, a lot more companies (especially in knowledge work industries) see it as too risky to allow their employees to send as much data as they have been to OpenAI/Anthropic. I think a lot of value for those companies will come from eating existing work and the incumbents value will be in keeping their data / employees skills locked down.
ghemptontoday at 5:31 PM
We've noticed this occasionally and its a pretty serious issue since we tell our customers that none of their data is being trained on. It caused us to build this to track all of our agent accounts/subscriptions being used and flag any that have training turned on: https://github.com/codealong/codealong
christimmermantoday at 6:19 PM
Wouldn't be surprised, could be a coding error? If you want to give them the benefit of the doubt?
vibraniumtoday at 4:01 PM
If you really care, sign a ZDR contract with OpenAI or use Bedrock or something.
bentttoday at 3:57 PM
Don't trust this company.
edottoday at 3:53 PM
Turn on advanced account security. You should be doing this anyways (requires hardware keys). But it also locks data sharing off.
tiffanyhtoday at 5:29 PM
Unchanged for me (disabled/off)
impossibleforktoday at 5:11 PM
Surely the solution to this kind of thing is to sue or make police report, or at least to have ones lawyers contact theirs?
apt-apt-apt-apttoday at 4:44 PM
Or my other favorite move, the quiet new little guy in settings.
E.g. "Allow ABC to transmit, log, and track your every move? ON" Hey, when did this little guy get here!
sloptoday at 4:36 PM
This isn't exactly relevant, but something I like about T3 code is that they'll fix stuff quickly that anthropic or open ai mess up in their harnesses.
TechRemarkertoday at 6:11 PM
Mine is still set to off.
hyperbovinetoday at 4:17 PM
Never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by stupidity.
The quality of their software is such crap and this is probably just some vibe coding mishap. Go read the Github issues for Codex CLI for example -- robots talking past other robots. I am 99.9% certain not a single human being has a deep understanding of what is going on with the Codex app anymore.
kiantoday at 5:30 PM
can confirm. this should be illegal behavior.
kylehotchkisstoday at 5:53 PM
I was just in my settings telling codex to stop trying to browser use Safari (ugh) and noticed that model training was enabled. Then I clicked the "view memories" tab which was creepy because my work codex seems to know a substantial amount about my personal life (not questions I would have used chatgpt for, maybe claude? is it watching my screen? idk)
_doctor_lovetoday at 3:59 PM
When you think about it, it's really terrible for your training data to be sitting on your machine uningested. It ought to be centrally located. You know, for the greater good.
m3kw9today at 5:01 PM
mine wasn't reenabled
thewhitetuliptoday at 4:21 PM
They said that they have millions of lines of PRs merged daily
Pretty sure they don't know this has happened lol
Maybe they'll raise a new PR with 1000000 lines to revert back now that you guys leaked the information
spwa4today at 3:34 PM
OpenAI is also now hiding your usage. Not accessible anymore in the menu, and /usage in the codex app now also gives a lot of stats, but the one stat you do want to know, how much limit left, is no longer there.
I'm guessing another big usage reduction is coming soon.
Ronaldotchiotoday at 4:55 PM
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Zyxel89today at 4:57 PM
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oxcartctltoday at 4:34 PM
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wzee-devtoday at 5:28 PM
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tha_infra_guytoday at 5:09 PM
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ankur_misratoday at 5:01 PM
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moeenmirza707today at 4:18 PM
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rfgplktoday at 4:41 PM
You actually _want_ OpenAI to train their models on your code. This helps future models become far more effective for your line of work.
> but IP
There is absolutely nothing novel humans can come up (yes, doesn't matter who you are) that LLMs aren't aware of.
CEOatMindfriestoday at 3:43 PM
May be the coding agents should build a layer when they don't leak any IP, treat them like environment variables, which must be handled deterministically.
novaRomtoday at 5:20 PM
So, you are paranoid about leaking IP to the frontier labs, but you are using their remote black boxed services? What a solid logic.
rachrtoday at 6:22 PM
This is one of the companies responsible for the theft of basically all human knowledge. There is no way I would trust confidential information with any of these companies.