Ever more developers are jumping on the AI bandwagon—they are producing more and better code more quickly, while reducing (or even eliminating) time spent on redundant and tedious tasks. But the code your AI assistant has access to could also be used to train models and then end up in a competitor’s next sprint. Before you integrate an AI into your toolchain, be sure to quantify the risk associated with the intellectual property you’re handing over.

Many AI providers see substantial value in training models on your code—not just to improve their products, but as a path toward artificial general intelligence (AGI). When their interests conflict with yours, understanding your exposure becomes essential:

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In most enterprises, sharing confidential intellectual property (IP) outside your organization is a serious violation of company policy with potentially job-ending consequences. You want to ensure that you have: 

• An ironclad contract prohibiting training & retention for any purposes other than transient contextual knowledge for the underlying models 
• Security hardening proven out via SOC 2 + ISO 27001 audits
• Strong indemnification for your IP to protect against leaks and contamination
• Enforcement of proof-of-possession so the AI cannot inadvertently share your most secure code. 

If you investigate, you will find certain AI providers are not doing enough to protect both your company's software and your career!

Essential Questions for Your AI Vendor

Before integrating any AI coding assistant into your enterprise environment, ask these critical questions to protect your organization's intellectual property:

1. Do you ever or have you ever trained models on my software without my explicitly granting you permission to do so?
   Augment Code: No. 
2. By default, is training on our proprietary code turned off?
   Augment Code: Yes. 
3. Do you ever or have you ever sold my data to third parties for them to train on our software for models that you are not using in your solution?
   Augment Code: No. 
4. If I am on any paid plan, do you provide a means to ensure that our software is never shared or trained upon even if one of our engineers were mistakenly to opt in?
   Augment Code: Yes. 

We strongly recommend getting these answers in writing before allowing your codebase to be indexed by any AI solution. If a vendor hesitates—or worse, glosses over one of these—walk away.

Understanding Enterprise Software Value

When evaluating AI tools, it's helpful to think of your enterprise software in two categories:

• Core — The subset containing unique, material value to your organization, often including trade secrets or patented algorithms that must be protected
• Context — Everything else supporting your core functionality

While businesses would theoretically be open to allowing training on context code in exchange for better AI performance, there's typically no practical way to separate core from context. This reality demands a cautious approach to AI integration, particularly in enterprise and government environments.

How Augment Code Protects Your Intellectual Property

At Augment Code, we've built our solution specifically for software engineering at scale. Our platform creates a  real-time semantic index of your entire codebase to provide optimal context to our AI, enabling it to function as a domain expert in your environment.

Our approach is fundamentally built on trust. That's why we:

• Never train on your software without explicit permission
• Maintain state-of-the-art security to safeguard your proprietary code
• Ensure your code is never retained by any third-party providers
• Offer enterprise-grade controls to prevent accidental data sharing

While we do offer a community option for those who wish to contribute their code for training (typically open source developers), this is strictly opt-in and comes with clear benefits like reduced costs. Even in this scenario, we never sell your data to arbitrary third parties.

Making the Right Choice for Your Organization

Our recommendation is simple: safeguard your company's intellectual property before trialing any AI coding assistant. If you're uncertain, begin with lower-risk codebases while establishing proper safeguards for your enterprise environment. 

Don't compromise on security or productivity. With Augment Code, you can accelerate your development while keeping your intellectual property exactly where it belongs—in your control.