Concerns over personal privacy with the AI plugin

[wotography (Wolfgang)]

#feature-request
Dear devs from discourse,
thanks for getting the ai plugin up and running. We are using this in our community forum where we share opinions as well es best practices for our work.
We have concerns about personal privacy rights here in europa. As rule in our forum we use given names as username. A requests with ai plugin sends the name alongside the post content to thirdparty services in other countries and regions (openai, meta, claude, and whatsoever). This is a huge problem for us using the plugin, cause it connects the content to individuals.
Therefore we hope for an extra privacy feature to disable all sorts of personal data transfers.
Would love to hear back form you.
best, wolfgang

[Falco]

@wotography

ai plugin sends the name alongside the post content to thirdparty services in other countries and regions (openai, meta, claude, and whatsoever). This is a huge problem for us using the plugin, cause it connects the content to individuals.

That is a deliberate choice by the site owners.

Discourse AI was built agnostic from AI providers since day one, so the admins can pick an AI provider that they trust with the data, one that adheres to any regional boundaries, or even host the AI models on the same hardware where the forum runs, so data is never shared with third parties.

[wotography (Wolfgang)]

Hi Falco,
Could you guide me or give me instructions how I can change this setting?
But also this post describes very well what I think of:

@merefield

Both of my plugins send usernames and raw Post content (ie the markdown). NB if someone mentions someone’s name in a Post, or an address that will get sent in the markdown, of course, but otherwise Users are only depicted by Usernames.

[Falco]

@wotography

Could you guide me or give me instructions how I can change this setting?

It should be the same way you setup your LLM in the first place, by going in the Admin > Plugin > AI > LLM and registering your LLM of choice there.

[wotography (Wolfgang)]

I see, thanks. But I think its a misunderstanding. My point is, I want to be able to choose whether the username gets send to the LLM, doesn’t matter which one. Is this setting also as you described above?

[Falco]

No, there is no site setting for that and it is not planned at the moment.

The workaround we provide for staff that need stricter rules around what is shared with third parties is compatibility with virtually every hosted and local LLMs that solves the issue by attacking it from another angle.

[sam (Sam Saffron)]

@wotography

My point is, I want to be able to choose whether the username gets send to the LLM

I think it would be a pretty incomplete feature for us to introduce giving site operators a false sense of safety.

If usernames are considered PII… then what about the huge myriad of ways this PII creeps into posts?

• quotes
• mentions
• just casually mentioning Jane Austin?

[wotography (Wolfgang)]

Okay, fair point. Didn’t had that in mind.
So what your saying is, it all comes down to a LLM we trust? If we trust no LLM and can’t afford to host our own we can’t use the feature/plugin?

[lennylo (Lenny Loling)]

How else can you maintain confidentiality if even a passing mention or quote can reveal identifying information?

[Falco]

@wotography

If we trust no LLM and can’t afford to host our own we can’t use the feature/plugin?

Exactly! If you both:

• Don’t trust any third party LLMs
• Don’t want to run your own LLM

I recommend not integrating LLMs in your forum.