ChatGPT-creator OpenAI unveils major decision on how to use ‘customer data’

Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, in a major announcement, said the artificial intelligence company did not train its AI large-language models such as GPT with paying customer data “for a while”.

“Customers clearly want us not to train on their data, so we’ve changed our plans: We will not do that,” Altman told CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin.

The company silently updated the OpenAI’s terms of service on March 1. “We don’t train on any API data at all, we haven’t for a while,” Altman told CNBC.

APIs (application programming interfaces) are frameworks that allow customers to plug directly into OpenAI’s software.

OpenAI’s business customers, which include Microsoft, Salesforce and Snapchat, are more likely to take advantage of OpenAI’s API capabilities.

The catch is that OpenAI’s new privacy and data protection applies to only those users who have subscribed to the company’s API services.

“We may use Content from Services other than our API,” the company’s updated Terms of Use note. Simply put, this content may include — but is not limited to — for instance, text that is entered into the ChatGPT, the OpenAI’s beloved chatbot.

Reports have been doing rounds that e-commerce giant Amazon has discouraged its workers from sharing confidential information with ChatGPT as this would run the risk of its appearing in the answers.

The development comes at a time when industries are struggling with the possibility of AI chatbots taking over the production of content that humans produce.

According to CNBC’s Rohan Goswami, the Writers Guild of America, in a case in point, went on strike on Tuesday following the failure of talks between the association and movie studios.

The Writers Guild is demanding restrictions on the use of OpenAI’s ChatGPT for script generating or rewriting.

Moreover, content creators were rightly so concerned about the consequences of ChatGPT and similar software on their original intellectual property.

Barry Diller, the entertainment giant, has advised media companies to drag AI companies to the courts for the use of creative content.