Fearing Leaks, Samsung Bans Employees From Using ChatGPT

On Tuesday, global technology giant Samsung told employees that using ChatGPT on company systems is no longer allowed.

In a memo sent to employees, Bloomberg reports, Samsung prohibited the use of the wildly popular chatbot due to concerns that employees were feeding ChatGPT sensitive corporate information. Samsung says in its notice that data sent to AI platforms like ChatGPT, Google Bard, and Bing are stored on external servers, may be hard to retrieve or delete, and could be disclosed to others.

“We ask that you diligently adhere to our security guideline, and failure to do so may result in a breach or compromise of company information resulting in disciplinary action up to and including termination of employment,” Samsung said.

Like many technology companies, Samsung is very protective of its intellectual property, including hardware and software designs and product release roadmaps. While it’s unclear whether Samsung-specific information could be retrieved from the Large Language Models used by generative AI tools, even abstracted information could be exploited by competitors.

Samsung joins a growing list of companies, including Amazon, JP Morgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, and Verizon, that have limited or banned employees from using third-party AI tools on company computers and mobile devices.

But while Samsung is pumping the brakes on using third-party AI, the company is moving ahead with its plans for integrating artificial intelligence into its semiconductor products.

OpenAI’s ChatGPT took the internet by storm after the launch of GPT-4 in March. Days after the program hit the web, a group of prominent technologists, researchers, and influencers, including Elon Musk, Steve Wozniak, and Andrew Yang, called on OpenAI to hit the pause button on training the next version of its artificial intelligence tool, ChatGPT.

After several countries voiced concerns over user privacy, OpenAI updated ChatGPT to include the option to opt-out of having the chatbot store chat history or allowing the use of user data in training the program.

Samsung says it is reviewing security measures to enable safe AI use for productivity but is temporarily restricting the use of generative AI.

But, if you’re curious about what Samsung’s product roadmap may look like, you’d be better off looking at the official Samsung website.

Samsung has not yet responded to Decrypt’s request for comment.