Thanks for the Anytype rec. I have similarly been looking for a good alternative since they turned on AI features you can’t easily opt out of. And I’m not some anti-LLM zealot — I use them every day.

I’m not even worried about them training on user data. The more immediate problem is that if you accidentally type something in the Ask AI box (which is very easy to do because it looks like search), the page you’re on and god know what else is sent to god knows where. When I use LLMs, I like to know which one I’m using and exactly what I’m sending them.

I felt their AI integration was very cavalier and it completely changed my opinion of them as a company. On top of that, the YouTube and Tik Tok productivity grifters thrive on the ecosystem of template BS that Notion seems very happy to encourage. I guess they can’t help it but it is not my vibe. I also want something more stripped down and programmable. Obviously a programmer is not a typical consumer.

(I work at Notion but not on AI)

We maintain a list of data su processors here: https://www.notion.so/notion/Notion-s-List-of-Subprocessors-...

It’s not as specific as citing the actual model version in use from each vendor, though.

That isn't reassuring at all. It's pretty much the worst case scenario. I don't want my private notes sent to places like openai who will use them to train models and who don't have any reasonable corporate governance. They have leaked customer data before.

And I'm not anti AI. I'm an ML researcher who uses LLMs all the time. But there's a big difference between that and revealing all my private information to them.

In their defense, in my phrasing, what is sent and to whom had equal weight. But you’re exactly right: obviously it is OpenAI and Anthropic. The private content being sent is the important part.

(I work at Notion but not on AI)

There’s far more for Notion to lose “training customer data on AI” than for Notion to gain. Like if an AI feature ever disclosed private information of one customer to another, that would be a huge blow to the company.

The closest thing to that that makes sense for us is building “learn to rank” style search models to improve search results, but this is not usually considered “AI” and is typical for any product trying to make search good.

For me, it seems that most of the notion users in my circle(very small one) are non-technical people. Even if your AI vomits some other user’s private data, it’ll be considered a glitch and will be forgiven because non-technical users does not panic or gets flame-baited because these are irrelevant to them.

That being said, I appreciate that you understand the risk, and want to believe that the people on the helm of the AI feature and people on the leadership also share your opinion.

> it seems that most of the notion users in my circle(very small one) are non-technical people.

All the users in my circle are the opposite, they are all technical individuals. Largely developers for whatever reason.

On the contrary if Notion were to regurgitate one company’s business development strategy notes to another company, that would be much worse than a technical documentation leak! In my experience non-technical data usually much more important to users than technical data, non-technical users are much less understanding, and our community keeps very close eye out for bugs, leaks, changes in privacy policy, etc.

I appreciate the response but once you get investors and shareholders those concerns are worthless.

If it's possible, it will eventually happen.

You can turn Notion AI off in your tenant. It takes a few days, but support will do it. It's annoying that we have to ask instead of toggling a switch, but there you go.