The generative AI models that power ChatGPT, Copilot Gemini, and other assistants were created using mountains of training data. Going forward, Microsoft will begin using your interactions with GitHub Copilot as another source of that information, unless you specifically opt out of collection.
GitHub, the popular coding platform owned by Microsoft, announced today that it will use GitHub Copilot interactions to “train and improve AI models.” GitHub Copilot is an AI code assistance tool integrated into Visual Studio Code, the GitHub website, the Copilot CLI tool (which competes with Claude Code), and other services. This includes input or output data, code snippets, comments and documentation, file names, repository structure, and other information.
If you’ve never used GitHub Copilot in the first place, this won’t change anything. However, your interactions and code snippets may be collected if you use code completion in Visual Studio Code, ask Copilot a question on the GitHub website, or use another related AI feature.
Importantly, automatic data collection applies to both free and paid accounts. This includes Copilot Free, Copilot Pro, and Copilot Pro+ users, but excludes Copilot Business and Copilot Enterprise accounts.
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The blog post explains that GitHub Copilot’s initial AI models were “built using a combination of publicly available data and hand-crafted code samples” (which were not well-received by everyone), and the company has seen positive improvements by incorporating data from Microsoft employees. Now, GitHub hopes to further improve its service as more interactions are used as training data.
GitHub said in an announcement, “This approach is consistent with established industry practices and improves the performance of models for all users. Participating will help models better understand their development workflows, provide more accurate and secure code pattern suggestions, and improve their ability to discover potential bugs before they reach production.”
How to opt out
You can pause data collection from the Copilot Features page in your GitHub account settings. When you log into your account,[プライバシー]in section[GitHub が AI モデルのトレーニングにデータを使用することを許可する]The settings will be displayed.
Just set that drop-down menu to “disabled.” If you have multiple GitHub accounts, be sure to do this for each account.
Source: GitHub Blog
