China's Z.ai disables AI coding features after security issue

Chinese startup Z.ai disabled features of its AI coding assistant after users reported code repositories were uploaded to overseas cloud servers without consent.

The company stated the issue stemmed from the 'Codebase Indexing' feature, which was enabled by default, and has since patched the vulnerability.

An independent assessment found user code data was deleted and not retained, and Z.ai has open-sourced the assistant and enabled zero-data retention.