The company seems to have quietly begun “scraping” AI training data from information people are typing in to its desktop publishing program Word and its spreadsheet tool Excel.

The latest claims stem from an X post by @nixCraft, who accuses Microsoft of turning on an opt-out feature that automatically scrapes Word and Excel documents for AI training.

Data scraping can lead to significant competitive advantages, but there are many considerations when looking to utilize this tool and strategy.

According to a report on tech news site Tom’s Hardware, Microsoft’s Office system—the subscription-based online software suite that contains many tools aimed at digital workers, and used by over a ...