{"slug": "openai-privacy-filter", "name": "OpenAI Privacy Filter", "category": "ai", "category_name": "AI tools and apps", "description": "", "recommenders": 3, "commenters": 7, "warners": 0, "score": 3.811, "rising": -0.98, "first": "2026-04-23", "latest": "2026-10-07", "why": "works decently and lightweight enough to run virtually anywhere", "why_is_quote": true, "has_verdict": false, "sentiment": {"recommend": 3, "neutral": 4, "compare": 0, "warn": 0}, "spark": [0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0], "listed": true, "loved": [], "caveat": "", "short_quote": "works decently and lightweight enough to run virtually anywhere", "kind": "", "icon": false, "domain": "openai.com", "github_repo": null, "official_url": "", "pricing": "", "aliases": ["OpenAI Privacy Filter", "OpenAI privacy filter", "OpenAI privacy-filter"], "verdict": null, "praise": [{"label": "", "summary": "", "quotes": [{"id": 782181216, "item_id": 48886326, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48886326", "by": "ahdgs", "date": "2026-07-12", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "works decently and lightweight enough to run virtually anywhere", "excerpt": "i've been using OpenAI's os PII-masking model, works decently and lightweight enough to run virtually anywhere https://huggingface.co/openai/privacy-filter", "context": "", "use_case": "PII masking", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: How do you use LLMs for private discussions?"}, {"id": 769423088, "item_id": 48088943, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48088943", "by": "FrasiertheLion", "date": "2026-05-10", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "OpenAI's privacy filter is a good example of a model that can be used to mask PII and secrets", "excerpt": "Overall I'm bullish on standardized local APIs that ship with the browser or platform. Far more tractable than expecting end users to stand up their own local model instances, though r/LocalLLaMA is a fantastic community to follow if you want to go that route. A useful framing over \u201clocal vs cloud AI\u201d can be split along two axes: does the task touch private data, and does it need frontier intelligence? You can use fr", "context": "", "use_case": "Masking PII and secrets locally", "switched_from": "", "story": "Local AI needs to be the norm"}, {"id": 767024705, "item_id": 47939044, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47939044", "by": "hanneshapke", "date": "2026-04-28", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "The privacy filter is great, but it leaves a gap for non-technical users", "excerpt": "The privacy filter is great, but it leaves a gap for non-technical users. Therefore, Dataiku's open source team at 575 Lab has built the Kiji Privacy Proxy. It is a complete app (MacOS/Linux/Chrome extension) that uses a fine-tuned DeBERTa model. It acts as a forward proxy, but we also have an experimental transparent proxy setup. It detects 20+ entities, not just masks them, but also converts them back on the return", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "OpenAI model for masking personally identifiable information (PII) in text"}]}], "caveats": [], "who": [{"by": "aubinkure", "context": "builds PII detection systems", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47876710", "date": "2026-04-23"}], "tags": [], "use_cases": ["pii detection", "pii masking", "masking pii and secrets locally", "pii masking in text"], "compared": [], "makers": [], "threads": [{"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47870901", "title": "OpenAI model for masking personally identifiable information (PII) in text", "mentions": 4}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49997240", "title": "Show HN: Smart Blur \u2013 Auto-Blur PII in the Browser, with a OpenAI Local Model", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48885422", "title": "Ask HN: How do you use LLMs for private discussions?", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48085821", "title": "Local AI needs to be the norm", "mentions": 1}], "sentiment_by_month": {"2025-11": {}, "2025-12": {}, "2026-01": {}, "2026-02": {}, "2026-03": {}, "2026-04": {"neutral": 3, "recommend": 1}, "2026-05": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-06": {}, "2026-07": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-08": {}, "2026-09": {}, "2026-10": {"neutral": 1}}, "versions": [], "version_unnamed": 0, "family_ref": null, "runs_on": null, "lines": [], "quotes": [{"id": 799956896, "item_id": 49997306, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49997306", "by": "vickyonlinecont", "date": "2026-10-07", "version": null, "stance": "neutral", "quote": "You can read more about the ai model here", "excerpt": "I am not packaging the AI model in my chrome extension. It is getting downloaded from HuggingFace on from user's browser directly. You can read more about the ai model here: https://huggingface.co/openai/privacy-filter", "context": "", "use_case": "PII detection", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: Smart Blur \u2013 Auto-Blur PII in the Browser, with a OpenAI Local Model"}, {"id": 782181216, "item_id": 48886326, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48886326", "by": "ahdgs", "date": "2026-07-12", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "works decently and lightweight enough to run virtually anywhere", "excerpt": "i've been using OpenAI's os PII-masking model, works decently and lightweight enough to run virtually anywhere https://huggingface.co/openai/privacy-filter", "context": "", "use_case": "PII masking", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: How do you use LLMs for private discussions?"}, {"id": 769423088, "item_id": 48088943, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48088943", "by": "FrasiertheLion", "date": "2026-05-10", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "OpenAI's privacy filter is a good example of a model that can be used to mask PII and secrets", "excerpt": "Overall I'm bullish on standardized local APIs that ship with the browser or platform. Far more tractable than expecting end users to stand up their own local model instances, though r/LocalLLaMA is a fantastic community to follow if you want to go that route. A useful framing over \u201clocal vs cloud AI\u201d can be split along two axes: does the task touch private data, and does it need frontier intelligence? You can use fr", "context": "", "use_case": "Masking PII and secrets locally", "switched_from": "", "story": "Local AI needs to be the norm"}, {"id": 767024705, "item_id": 47939044, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47939044", "by": "hanneshapke", "date": "2026-04-28", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "The privacy filter is great, but it leaves a gap for non-technical users", "excerpt": "The privacy filter is great, but it leaves a gap for non-technical users. Therefore, Dataiku's open source team at 575 Lab has built the Kiji Privacy Proxy. It is a complete app (MacOS/Linux/Chrome extension) that uses a fine-tuned DeBERTa model. It acts as a forward proxy, but we also have an experimental transparent proxy setup. It detects 20+ entities, not just masks them, but also converts them back on the return", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "OpenAI model for masking personally identifiable information (PII) in text"}, {"id": 766546448, "item_id": 47909153, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47909153", "by": "LatencyKills", "date": "2026-04-26", "version": null, "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I can use OpenAI's Privacy Filter model to do the work for me.", "excerpt": "> If you have the redacted and unredacted versions, then you can diff them; that seems unsurprising? I'm suggesting that a model designed for high-accuracy redaction can also be used to find all PII in unredacted text. For example, if I don't already know how to find PII (e.g., regex, NLP, etc.) I can use OpenAI's Privacy Filter model to do the work for me. I'm not saying it's an issue, I just think it is interesting", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "OpenAI model for masking personally identifiable information (PII) in text"}, {"id": 766525377, "item_id": 47907836, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47907836", "by": "fzxu22", "date": "2026-04-25", "version": null, "stance": "neutral", "quote": "It does model (OpenAI privacy filter) + regex PII detection", "excerpt": "Working on this: https://github.com/KevinXuxuxu/anon_proxy, a sort of anonymization proxy to use with LLM providers. It does model (OpenAI privacy filter) + regex PII detection, and replaces them back-and-forth for API requests and responses. With locally hosted detection model, no PII leaves your local environment. I find it very useful especially when you're working on sensitive documents (legal, tax, immigration e", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "OpenAI model for masking personally identifiable information (PII) in text"}, {"id": 766027360, "item_id": 47876710, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47876710", "by": "aubinkure", "date": "2026-04-23", "version": null, "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Exciting! I took a look through the code", "excerpt": "Exciting! I took a look through the code and found what appear to be the entity types for future releases - this release (V2 config) supports 8 entity types, but the V4 and V7 taxonomies have >20, mostly more personal ID types. Given this is a preview release, I imagine they'll release these. Details in my review article here: https://piieraser.ai/blog/openai-privacy-filter. Disclaimer: I also build PII detection sys", "context": "builds PII detection systems", "use_case": "PII masking in text", "switched_from": "", "story": "OpenAI model for masking personally identifiable information (PII) in text"}]}