Connect with us

Published

on

Dropbox CEO Drew Houston speaks onstage during the Dropbox Work In Progress Conference at Pier 48 on September 25, 2019 in San Francisco

Matt Winkelmeyer | Dropbox | Getty Images

If you’ve used any of Dropbox‘s AI tools, some of your documents and files may have been shared with OpenAI.

There’s a valid business reason the company is working with OpenAI: Dropbox doesn’t have its own chatbot, so in order to provide chatbot services like summarizing or answering questions about your files, it needs to send that information to a third-party, and then pass along the third-party chatbot’s response to you.

However, there may still be cause for customer concern.

Dropbox AI customer documents pass through and are stored on OpenAI’s servers for up to 30 days. And, the “third-party AI” toggle is turned on by default in account settings, according to Dropbox’s FAQs, published in October, so you need to turn it off if you don’t want your files going to OpenAI.

The news follows a barrage of public discussion and concern over user privacy amid the uptick in use of consumer-facing AI models, like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Bard and Anthropic’s Claude, not to mention companies’ proprietary AI models. In August, Zoom changed its terms of service after it came under fire for allowing its AI models to train on some customer data.

Dropbox’s third-party AI data-sharing only applies to users who want Dropbox’s AI features, which is available through many of Dropbox’s paid plans, or through its Early Access program. According to Dropbox, “only the content relevant to an explicit request or command is sent to our third-party AI partners.”

But, even if you’ve opted out, any files shared with another person who is using Dropbox AI could still be sent to OpenAI servers.

In one part of the FAQs, Dropbox writes that for OpenAI, customer data “is never used to train their internal models,” but in another section, the company writes that it “won’t let our third-party partners train their models on our user data without consent.”

Dropbox did not immediately respond to a request for comment, including a question on clarifying whether customer data is “never used” to train models or if it is solely not used “without consent.”

Here’s how to turn off use of third-party AI in your Dropbox settings if you have data you don’t want being sent anywhere outside of Dropbox:

  1. Log into Dropbox.
  2. Click your account icon in the upper right corner.
  3. Click Settings.
  4. Choose the Third-Party AI tab.
  5. Toggle the switch to “off.”

Continue Reading

Technology

Online trading platform Webull soars 375% in second day on market after SPAC merger

Published

on

By

Online trading platform Webull soars 375% in second day on market after SPAC merger

Anthony Denier, CEO fo Webull, speaks during an interview on CNBC on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York City, U.S., June 1, 2022. 

Brendan McDermid | Reuters

Shares of Webull soared nearly 375% on Monday, the second day on the market for the stock-trading app, which completed its merger last week with SK Growth Opportunities Corp., a special-purpose acquisition company (SPAC).

The rally gives Webull a market cap of almost $30 billion.

Webull competes with Robinhood, Charles Schwab and E-Trade. The app lets investors buy and sell shares and options in individual securities, exchange-traded funds and cryptocurrencies, and offers charts, watchlists, screening tools and paper trading.

The company says it has over 23 million registered users and operates in 15 regions globally. In addition to charging fees on trades, Webull has a premium tier with real-time data that costs $40 per year.

In an investor presentation last month, the company said it was expecting $390.2 million in 2024 revenue, which would be roughly flat from 2023.

Former Alibaba and Xiaomi manager Wang Anquan founded Webull in 2016, and he remains the company’s global CEO. Investors include Coatue, General Atlantic and Lightspeed. The app gained popularity during the Covid pandemic, as U.S. citizens used stimulus checks to invest, Anthony Denier, the company’s group president and U.S. CEO, told CNBC in 2021. Webull users are “much more intellectual” than Robinhood’s, Denier has said.

In November, the U.S. House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party sent a letter to Denier inquiring about the company’s ties to China. The company didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

The rise of blank-check companies such as SK Growth Opportunities peaked in 2021, with 613 IPOs completed, according to SPAC Insider. The market fell apart the following year as soaring inflation and rising interest rates pushed investors out of risky assets. So far this year there have been 23 SPAC IPOs.

Webull said last year that it was planning for its market debut to take place in the second half of 2024.

WATCH: House Committee slams Webull over alleged ties to Chinese Communist Party

House Committee slams Webull over alleged ties to Chinese Communist Party

Continue Reading

Technology

Apple regains $3 trillion market cap after Trump exempts tariffs on iPhones

Published

on

By

Apple regains  trillion market cap after Trump exempts tariffs on iPhones

Apple CEO Tim Cook greets former President Barack Obama at the inauguration of U.S. President Donald Trump at the U.S. Capitol Rotunda in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 20, 2025.

Julia Demaree Nikhinson | Getty Images

Apple shares rose more than 2% on Monday, pushing the company’s market cap back above $3 trillion, as Wall Street expressed some level of relief that the iPhone maker will be able to withstand President Donald Trump’s widespread tariffs.

Late Friday, the Trump administration announced that phones, computers and chips were exempted from new tariffs. Apple is among the most exposed companies to Trump’s tariffs because the majority of its iPhones, iPads and MacBooks are manufactured in China and other Asian countries. Trump has called for Apple to make its products in the U.S.

Most of Apple’s critical imports were exempted from the tariffs, a move that Wall Street analysts said could save Apple billions in costs. However, administration officials warned over the weekend that the exemptions were temporary and could change over the coming weeks.

“I speak to Tim Cook. I helped Tim Cook, recently, and that whole business,” Trump said Monday in a briefing with reporters in the Oval Office, referring to Apple’s CEO. “I don’t want to hurt anybody, but the end result is we’re going to get to the position of greatness for our country.”

Uncertainty about what the future holds helps explain Apple’s relatively muted gain on Friday. The stock is still down almost 9% in April after falling more than 8% in March. The 11% drop in the first quarter marked Apple’s worst performance since 2023.

Apple is the most valuable publicly traded U.S. company once again, edging out Microsoft.

Apple fell below the $3 trillion mark on April 4, two days after Trump announced “reciprocal tariffs” that would place significant duties on China and countries where the company does manufacturing.

The stock rallied last week after Trump announced his administration was dropping new tariff rates to 10% on imports from countries other than China, which would face tariffs as high as 145%.

Analysts at Morgan Stanley wrote in a note Monday that the latest news from the White House brings Apple’s “annualized tariff cost burden” to $7 billion, down from $44 billion as of Thursday.

WATCH: Having exposure to Apple is important

Having exposure to Apple is important, says Bokeh’s Kim Forrest

Continue Reading

Technology

Meta resorted to ‘buy-or-bury scheme’ with Instagram and WhatsApp deals, former FTC Chair Lina Khan says

Published

on

By

Meta resorted to 'buy-or-bury scheme' with Instagram and WhatsApp deals, former FTC Chair Lina Khan says

Watch CNBC's full interview with former FTC Chair Lina Khan

Former U.S. Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan said Monday that Facebook “panicked” when making the acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp as smartphone use took off.

“It saw companies like Instagram and WhatsApp experiencing astronomical growth, and that’s the point at which it resorted to this buy-or-bury scheme where, if it couldn’t outcompete a rival, it either bought them out or cut them off its network,” Khan said on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”

Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, begins a trial with the FTC on Monday. The government alleges that the company monopolized the personal social networking market with its $1 billion acquisition of Instagram in 2012 and $19 billion purchase of WhatsApp in 2014.

Meta did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.

The trial could result in the social media giant divesting the two companies. Meta has filed a pretrial brief detailing its disagreement with the FTC and reiterating that it believes the company does not have a monopoly.

Read more CNBC tech news

“There’s no expiration date when it comes to the illegality of the transaction,” Khan said. “I think there is a way in which the entire social networking ecosystem looks different today because Facebook was permitted to go out and make these acquisitions.”

The case is, at its core, about “free and fair trade,” Khan added. Though no settlement has been reached, she said there’s always a possibility of a settlement before the case concludes.

With President Donald Trump regularly holding court with tech executives, Khan said she’s “glad” that Meta and CEO Mark Zuckerberg‘s efforts to dismiss the case have been, thus far, unsuccessful.

Zuckerberg donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration fund, co-hosted an inaugural ball and has reportedly met with the president multiple times since January.

“Until the trial is over and until we actually get a liability verdict and then a remedy, we’re all going to have to wait and see,” Khan said.

Don’t miss these insights from CNBC PRO

Continue Reading

Trending