FAQ
Questions
- How's the Privatemode API different from other GenAI APIs?
- Can you see my prompts and the corresponding replies?
- You run your service on Microsoft Azure. Can't they see my data?
- You use the OpenAI API standard. Is any data transferred to OpenAI?
- Which data is processed by Edgeless Systems?
How's the Privatemode API different to other GenAI APIs?
In contrast to other GenAI APIs, the Privatemode API offers dependable privacy and security properties. Your prompts and replies always stay hidden from any third party, even from us, Edgeless Systems.
With other GenAI APIs, data can be accessed by third parties at various points when interacting with the AI. For example:
- Infrastructure providers like Microsoft or AWS have privileged access and control over the underlying hardware and system software. This means they can potentially access your prompts and replies.
- GenAI service providers like OpenAI also have the ability to access your data.
With the Privatemode API, your prompts and replies remain confidential. By design, neither Microsoft Azure as the infrastructure provider, nor Edgeless Systems as your service provider can access or leak your prompts or replies.
To ensure this, the Privatemode API leverages confidential computing, a cutting-edge technology that provides runtime encryption and protection for data. The Privatemode API applies confidential computing end-to-end and make this verifiable from the outside. With the help of confidential computing-based remote attestation, it's possible to verify the integrity and authenticity of the software of the entire Privatemode software stack.
This makes the Privatemode API fundamentally different from other GenAI APIs. You fully own your prompts and replies.
Feel free to dive deeper into Privatemode's security properties.
Can you see any prompts or replies?
No. By leveraging confidential computing and providing hardware-enforced end-to-end encryption, Privatemode ensures that Edgeless Systems can't access your prompts or replies.
You run your service on Microsoft Azure. Can't they see our data?
This is important to us: By design, our infrastructure provider can't access any of your prompts or responses.
The Privatemode API is based on confidential computing, and this is where it truly shines. Thanks to its strong, hardware-enforced confidentiality, even the infrastructure provider that controls the hardware and system software can't access any of your data.
You use OpenAI's API standard. Is any data transferred to OpenAI?
The Privatemode API doesn't use any OpenAI services. It only adheres to the common OpenAI interface definitions (prompt and response format) to provide a convenient development experience and ensure easy code portability.
Which data is processed by Edgeless Systems?
Prompts and responses are always encrypted and inaccessible to third parties. For monitoring purposes, the following metadata information is stored for up to 90 days:
- IP
- timestamp
- API key
- token usage
- request metadata: path, method, status code
- response time
Token usage for each API key is permanently stored for billing purposes.