Does Descript train on your data?
Descript's AI training is opt-in, and its own privacy policy hides that. The policy says you can opt out by "disabling" the setting; the help article says training needs a clear opt-in.
A self-serve opt-out exists
"for any in-house AI training we maintain a clear data sharing opt-in, and otherwise data is not used for AI training."
- 23 Sept 2026
- 5 Oct 2026
- All plans
- global
- Fetched from the company
- 4B3D05D4…0CF0
How we read it: Regraded D to B on 24 Aug 2026 after Descript disputed the entry, and it was right. We read the privacy policy, which says you may "opt out of having your Projects used to improve the Descript Service by disabling the Share Data with Descript setting" — and "disabling" is how you write about something already on. The policy never states the default; its only "by default" is about cookies. The help article it links to says the opposite of what the policy implies: training is opt-in, production models use no user data at all, R&D models use only opted-in data, and Enterprise drives cannot enable sharing. B rather than A because this is an undertaking, not an architecture.
by default, default, opt in, opt-in, opted in, Share Data with Descript, disabling
What the document does offer
- help article, captured 2026-08-24: "Current AI models in production use no Descript user data."
- same article: "Internal research and development AI models only data from users who have opted into data sharing"
- same article: "Enterprise drives do not have the option to toggle data sharing, which is disabled by default."
- same article, on sub-processors: "we have agreements in place that no data is used by them to train their AI models"
- in the privacy policy: "You can opt out ... by disabling the Share Data with Descript setting" — and no statement of the default anywhere; its only "by default" concerns cookies
Why none of it applies: The correction came from the company, and the error came from stopping at the privacy policy — the fourth time this month. What makes Descript unusual is the direction: almost every company whose help centre we have since read was better than its policy on detail, but Descript is a company whose policy makes its own product sound worse than it is. A reader who did what this site tells people to do — read the policy — would conclude they were opted in by default. They are not.
What Descript said when we showed them this
Changed“Descript does not use any user data for AI model training unless the user has explicitly opted in via the "Share data with Descript" setting. [...] For Enterprise drives, data sharing is disabled by default and cannot be enabled. No user data is shared with sub-processors (such as OpenAI) for the purpose of training their AI models.”
What each plan can refuse
The same questions, asked of every plan we could identify. Every cell comes from a quoted clause or a documented search - see the evidence above.
- Nothing to switch off
- Not stated
- 17 / 100
- Not stated
- Unknown
How to opt out of Descript AI training
Plan by plan, from what Descript's own policy says about refusing. Where it publishes the steps, they're listed here with the limits they carry. Where there's nothing to switch off, or nothing graded, this says so instead of inventing a menu path.
All plans
Nothing to switch off: training here is off until an opt-in is given, in a self-serve setting.
What this policy has done since we started watching
No change detected. We've held a copy of Descript's documents since 12 Jul 2026 and re-read them since, across 4 captures of 2 documents. The text hasn't moved in a way that touches this verdict. That's a fact about the documents, and it's only knowable by having kept the earlier copies.
Vendor response
Report a wrong clauseMore AI assistants on file
All 25 in ai-assistants →Show this verdict on your site
Descript is graded B, and a company that's earned that can say so with the verdict itself. The image below links back to this page and shows the live grade. If the grade changes, the badge changes the same day, wherever it's embedded. It's free and it isn't for sale.
