Samsung Electronics has banned the use of ChatGPT and other AI-powered chatbots by its employees, Bloomberg reported, becoming the latest company to crack down on the workplace use of AI services amid concerns about sensitive internal information being leaked on such platforms.
File Photo: Samsung Electronics has banned the use of ChatGPT and other similar tools at the workplace.
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According to Bloomberg, the crackdown was prompted by the discovery of an accidental leak of sensitive internal source code by an engineer who uploaded it to ChatGPT last month.
Samsung subsequently issued a memo last week banning the use of “generative AI” tools.
Although the severity of the leak remains unclear, Samsung is concerned that data shared with AI chatbots get stored on servers owned by companies operating the service like OpenAI, Microsoft, and Google—with no easy way to access and delete them.
The company also fears that the sensitive data shared with the likes of ChatGPT could end up being served to other users, the report adds.
By default, ChatGPT saves a user’s chat history and uses the conversations to train its models further, and while the platform allows users to disable this manually, it is unclear if this option retroactively applies to older chats.
Key Background
Samsung is not the only tech giant to crack down on the use of ChatGPT and similar tools among employees; Amazon issued a similar warning to staffers in January. The online retail giant informed its workers not to share any code or confidential information about the company with ChatGPT, after the company reportedly discovered examples of ChatGPT responses that resembled internal Amazon data. In February, JPMorgan Chase also heavily restricted the use of ChatGPT by its staffers amid concerns that it may face potential regulatory risks surrounding the sharing of sensitive financial information. Soon, other major U.S. banks—including Bank of America, Citigroup, Deutsche Bank, Wells Fargo and Goldman Sachs—followed suit.
Contra
Despite lingering concerns, several workplaces have begun to integrate generative AI tools into their workflow. Last month, Goldman Sachs—one of the banks to restrict the use of ChatGPT by staffers—disclosed it was using generative AI tools to help its software developers write and test code. The company, however, did not mention which specific tool or service it was using. Management consulting firm Bain & Company also announced earlier this year it was integrating OpenAI’s generative tools into its management systems. On Monday, IBM CEO Arvind Krishna said the company will stop hiring humans for jobs that AI tools can do.