Samsung Electronics has banned the use of AI tool such as ChatGPT by its employees. The move comes in response to the company finding out that some staff had uploaded sensitive company code on the platform which it fears could be stored on external servers, making it difficult to retrieve and delete.
According to a Bloomberg report, the company expressed concerns that such data could be disclosed to other users, prompting the decision to ban the use of generative AI systems on company-owned computers, tablets, and phones, as well as on its internal networks. The new policy was communicated to staff at one of Samsung’s biggest divisions in a memo. According to the memo, Samsung conducted a survey last month about the use of AI tools internally and found that 65% of respondents believed that such services posed a security risk. The memo warned that employees who broke the new policy by uploading sensitive company information to external services could face disciplinary action, “up to and including termination of employment.”
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It further informed that headquarters was reviewing security measures to create a secure environment for using generative AI to enhance employees’ productivity and efficiency, but until these measures were prepared, the company was temporarily limiting the use of such AI technology.
This news comes a month after it was reported that Samsung engineers at its semiconductor arm unintentionally leaked company’s confidential data to the AI. While the details on this data is still unknown, it is said that it included private details of company like source code and internal meeting notes. The company had reportedly asked the engineers to fix errors in their source code using OpenAI’s ChatGPT. The engineers, in the process, entered some crucial data of the company in the AI system including source code of yet-to-announce new program. As it is known to all, ChatGPT uses prompts as bits of information to train itself (unless you’re using its chat history off feature), the data entered is stored on its server and is impossible to delete.
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In response to such leaks and AI manhandling, Samsung is reportedly creating its own internal AI tools for translation and summarising documents, as well as for software development. It is also exploring ways to block the upload of sensitive company information to external services.
