Connected experiences

[StuartR]

If you edit confindential, or proprietary, information in Word then you may want to stop Microsoft using it to train their AI.

File > Options > Trust Center > Trust Center Settings > Privacy Options > Privacy Settings > Optional Connected Experiences > Uncheck box: “Turn on optional connected experiences”

[HansV]

Thanks!

[SpeakEasy]

Erm, ... despite a number of memes circulating to this effect, Microsoft are adamant that they do not use Word to train their LLM AIs Of course it is possible they are lying , but if they are lying why would they provide a tool to disable it (and imagine the reputational damage both with the public and with the growing AI regulatory institutions if this were to be discovered)?

[ChrisGreaves]

... but if they are lying why would they provide a tool to disable it (and imagine the reputational damage both with the public and with the growing AI regulatory institutions if this were to be discovered)?

Needless to say there is nothing like "stop harvesting AI" in Word2003, but in which versions of MSWord have Lounge members seen this setting?
Cheers, Chris

[ChrisGreaves]

If you edit confidential, or proprietary, information in Word then you may want to stop Microsoft using it to train their AI.

There again, bearing in mind that Microsoft is a marketing company rather than a software company, the best way to hide corporate data may be to embed it in Microsoft-trained AI
Cheers, Chris

[BobH]

To answer OMG, my Word from 2016 does not have the options Stuart spoke of.

[StuartR]

I just read the Microsoft privacy statement and I am no wiser about whether the data uploaded to Microsoft for Connected experiences that analyze your content is used to train their large language model.

I noted particularly that

...we use data to:
...
Improve and develop our products.
...

[SpeakEasy]

There are multiple, clear, official Microsoft statements in both the links below concerning how Microsoft does NOT use customer data to train LLMs. The "Turn on optional connected experiences" flag has nothing to do with LLMs - it's to do with enabling cloud-based extensions and enhancements to Office applications (some of which do use LLMs to do content analysis - e.g for translation - but they don't use that content to train the LLM ...)

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/mso ... 786f902b4d
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/copil ... ot-privacy

[StuartR]

Statements like "Microsoft 365 Copilot only surfaces organizational data to which individual users have at least view permissions" certainly imply that this data has been used to train copilot

[SpeakEasy]

>certainly imply that this data has been used to train copilot
I respectfully disagree. It implies no such thing,. It says Copilot needs to access data to be able to act on it - for example the Analyze Data feature in Excel 365, where Copilot requires access to cell data, or Powerpoint's Live captions & Subtitles feature which needs to access audio captured by your microphone while giving a PowerPoint presentation, or Read Aloud requiring access to a Word document.

And the Copilot document I previously linked is very specific about this:

Prompts, responses, and data accessed through Microsoft Graph aren't used to train foundation LLMs, including those used by Microsoft 365 Copilot

(Microsoft Graph is the technology through which 'organisational data is surfaced' for use by Copilot)

[Charles Kenyon]

... but if they are lying why would they provide a tool to disable it (and imagine the reputational damage both with the public and with the growing AI regulatory institutions if this were to be discovered)?

Needless to say there is nothing like "stop harvesting AI" in Word2003, but in which versions of MSWord have Lounge members seen this setting?
Cheers, Chris

This would be in Word 2019 or later and maybe only as part of Microsoft 365.