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Updated April 24, 2026 AI Industry News Major Editorial only, no paid placements

GitHub Copilot starts using Free, Pro, and Pro+ interaction data for model training unless users opt out

By aipedia.wiki Editorial 1 min read
GitHub Copilot starts using Free, Pro, and Pro+ interaction data for model training unless users opt out

GitHub’s new Copilot interaction-data training policy takes effect on April 24, 2026.

What changes

For Copilot Free, Pro, and Pro+ users, GitHub says interaction data can be used to train and improve AI models unless users opt out.

GitHub lists the included data as:

  • inputs sent to Copilot
  • outputs accepted or modified
  • code snippets shown to the model
  • surrounding cursor context
  • comments and documentation
  • file names and repository structure
  • navigation patterns
  • chat, inline suggestion, and feedback interactions

What is excluded

GitHub says the program does not use:

  • Copilot Business interaction data
  • Copilot Enterprise interaction data
  • enterprise-owned repository interaction data
  • data from users who opt out
  • issues, discussions, or private repositories at rest

Important nuance: private repositories at rest are excluded, but active Copilot interactions can include private-repo context if the user is using Copilot there.

Why it matters

This is one of the biggest AI-coding privacy changes of 2026 because it affects individual developers by default. It also creates a policy split:

  • enterprise users get stronger isolation
  • individual users get opt-out training by default

For tool scoring, it is a value-versus-trust tradeoff: Copilot may improve from real-world data, but individual developers and small teams need to revisit privacy settings.

Sources

Primary and corroborating references used for this news item.

1 cited source
  1. Updates to GitHub Copilot interaction data usage policy - GitHub Blog
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