If you use GitHub, you likely recently got an email that looks something like this:
Email (links replaced with non-tracker versions)
Hi there,
We’re updating how GitHub uses data to improve AI-powered coding tools. From April 24 onward, your interactions with GitHub Copilot—including inputs, outputs, code snippets, and associated context—may be used to train and enhance AI models unless you opt out.
If you previously opted out of the setting allowing GitHub to collect this data for product improvements, your preference has been retained— your choice is preserved, and your data will not be used for training unless you opt in.
This approach aligns with established industry practices and will enable our models to deliver more context-aware AI coding assistance. We have tested this with Microsoft interaction data and have seen meaningful improvements, including increased acceptance rates in multiple languages.
Please review your settings and choose whether your interactions with Copilot can be leveraged for training AI models before this update goes into effect on April 24. To opt out or adjust your settings:
- Go to GitHub Account Settings
- Select Copilot
- Choose whether to allow your data to be used for AI model training
To learn more, please refer to our blog post and FAQ.
Please reach out to our support team if you have any questions about this update. Thank you for your continued use of GitHub Copilot.
Sincerely,
The GitHub Team
At the time of writing, the email above, the blog post, and the FAQ all fail to mention one other thing: you may have had some authorizations added to your account for one or more “Authorized GitHub Apps”, namely, “Copilot Chat App”, “Copilot Pull Request Reviewer”, and/or “Copilot SWE Agent”.
Before this change was made, I already had every Copilot related setting disabled and did not use it. Yet I found the “Copilot SWE Agent” authorization had been added to my account, and apparently, it was “used within the last week”. I can’t imagine what it was used for, because I detest AI and refuse to use it for anything.
I would not have known to check for this if I hadn’t been warned by members of the Rust language Zulip chat. You may want to check your own accounts!
