As of April 24 you’ll be feeding the Octocat unless you opt out
What if people start sending malicious code to github? Poisoning the AI model
That’s what I tell myself I’m doing when I push more poorly written code to one of my repos
The data GitHub wants includes:
- Model outputs that have been accepted or modified;
- Model inputs including code snippets shown;
- Code context surrounding your cursor position;
- Comments and documentation you’ve written;
- File names and repo structure;
- Interactions with Copilot features (e.g. chats); and
- Feedback (e.g. thumbs up/down ratings)…As the FAQs explain: “If a Copilot user has their settings set to enable model training on their interaction data, code snippets from private repositories can be collected and used for model training while the user is actively engaged with Copilot while working in that repository.”
Source: https://www.theregister.com/2026/03/26/github_ai_training_policy_changes/
Yay, it’s not enough that most companies store highly confidential code on GitHub, now we will let a PUBLIC agent be trained on them.
Wonder how long it will take for people to find ways around guardrails and have the model essentially copy the entire codebase of a specific company with a simple prompt.
Do note that GitHub explicitly excludes those with an Enterprise (or other corporate) plan for precisely those reasons.
Color me shocked! Jk everybody saw that coming… It was probably hinted at to get reactions, then went ahead when people didn’t bitch too much.
To opt out, GitHub users should visit /settings/copilot/features and disable “Allow GitHub to use my data for AI model training” under the Privacy heading.
Do you guys really believe these opt-out buttons do anything?
Not /s btw, genuine question.
To mirror your question: do you really believe that a significant fraction of users will uncheck this checkbox?
Personally, I think only a few percent will do this and Microsoft does not care about losing their data.
Maybe. But I wonder how would it apply: are my contributions to another user’s repository still used for training if that user didn’t opt out?
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Placbo buttons to boil the frog.
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People still won’t leave 🤷
I’m home sick today. Gonna start migrating my shit away from there
I stand corrected. Luckily 👍
