A hot potato: GitHub has announced that starting April 24, the company will begin using interaction data from Copilot Free, Pro, and Pro+ users to train and improve its AI models unless they opt out. Copilot Business and Copilot Enterprise accounts are excluded, but for individual subscribers, the new setup is enabled by default, which is causing plenty of irritation.
GitHub describes this training data as inputs, outputs, code snippets, and associated context, but the fine print goes into more detail. According to the company, it can also include code surrounding the cursor, comments and documentation, file names, repository structure, navigation patterns, chats with Copilot features, and even thumbs-up or thumbs-down feedback on suggestions.
GitHub says it has already seen "meaningful improvements" after training on interaction data from Microsoft employees, including higher acceptance rates across multiple languages, and now wants to scale that approach to paying users.
GitHub says it still won't use private repository content at rest to train AI models, meaning code simply stored on GitHub remains off-limits. But if you are actively using Copilot while working inside a private repo, the prompts, suggestions, generated snippets, and surrounding context from that session may still be collected for training – unless you switch the setting off. That's technically not the same as training on your stored private repo, though many developers probably won't find the distinction especially comforting.
If you do want to opt-out, and it's likely that most people will, head to Copilot settings, find the Privacy section, and set Allow GitHub to use my data for AI model training to Disabled.
Github says anyone who previously opted out of data collection for product improvements will keep that preference, so they won't suddenly be volunteered into training next month.
GitHub also says data shared under the new policy may be used by affiliates, including Microsoft, though not by third-party AI model providers for their own separate training.
Unsurprisingly, response to the update, especially the fact that users must opt-out, has not been positive. A GitHub community post announcing the move has seen 117 thumbs-down votes and a slew of angry comments.