The generative AI models powering ChatGPT, Copilot Gemini, and other assistants were created with mountains of training data. Now, Microsoft will start using interactions with GitHub Copilot as another source of that information, unless you specifically opt out of the collection.
GitHub, the popular coding platform owned by Microsoft, announced today that interactions with GitHub Copilot will be used to “train and improve our AI models.” GitHub Copilot is the AI code assistance tool integrated in Visual Studio Code, the GitHub website, the Copilot CLI tool (which competes with Claude Code), and other services. That includes any input or output data, code snippets, comments and documentation, file names, repository structure, and other information.
If you have never used GitHub Copilot in the first place, this won’t change anything. However, if you’ve used the code completion in Visual Studio Code, asked Copilot a question on the GitHub website, or used another related AI feature, your interactions and code snippets could be harvested.
Importantly, the automatic data collection applies to both free and paid accounts. That includes Copilot Free, Copilot Pro, and Copilot Pro+ users, but not Copilot Business and Copilot Enterprise accounts.
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The blog post explained that the initial AI models for GitHub Copilot were “built using a mix of publicly available data and hand-crafted code samples” (which didn’t go over well with everyone), and the company has seen positive improvements by incorporating data from Microsoft employees. Now, GitHub is hoping that the service will become even better with more interactions used as training data.
GitHub said in the announcement, “This approach aligns with established industry practices and will improve model performance for all users. By participating, you’ll help our models better understand development workflows, deliver more accurate and secure code pattern suggestions, and improve their ability to help you catch potential bugs before they reach production.”
How to opt out
You can pause the data collection from the Copilot features page in your GitHub account settings. After you are logged into your account, there’s an “Allow GitHub to use my data for AI model training” setting in the Privacy section.
You just need to set that dropdown menu to “Disabled,” and that’s it. If you have multiple GitHub accounts, be sure to do that for each of your accounts.
Source: GitHub Blog
