Samsung bans staff’s AI use

SAMSUNG Electronics is banning employee use of popular generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools like ChatGPT after discovering staff uploaded a sensitive code to the platform.

The Suwon, South Korea-based company, notified staff at one of its biggest divisions last week about the new policy via a memo reviewed by Bloomberg News.

The company is concerned that data transmitted to such AI platforms, including Google Bard and Bing, is stored on external servers, making it difficult to retrieve and delete, and could end up being disclosed to other users, according to the document.

The company conducted a survey last month about the use of AI tools internally and said 65 percent of respondents believe such services pose a security risk.

Earlier in April, Samsung engineers accidentally leaked an internal source code by uploading it to ChatGPT, according to the memo.

It is unclear what the information encompassed.

A Samsung representative confirmed a memo was recently sent, banning the use of generative AI services.

“Interest in generative AI platforms such as ChatGPT has been growing internally and externally,” Samsung told staff.

“While this interest focuses on the usefulness and efficiency of these platforms, there are also growing concerns about security risks presented by generative AI.”
Samsung is just the latest big company to express concern about the technology.

In February, only a couple of months after OpenAI’s chatbot service stirred up a storm of interest in the technology, some Wall Street banks — including JPMorgan Chase & Co, Bank of America Corp and Citigroup Inc — either banned or restricted its use.

Italy also barred the use of ChatGPT over privacy fears, though it reversed its stance in recent days.

In the meantime, the company is creating its own internal AI tools for translation and summarising documents, as well as for software development.

It is also working on ways to block the upload of sensitive company information to external services.

Last month, ChatGPT added an “incognito” mode that allows users to block their chats from being used towards AI model training.

“HQ is reviewing security measures to create a secure environment for safely using generative AI to enhance employees’ productivity and efficiency,” the memo said.

“However, until these measures are prepared, we are temporarily restricting the use of generative AI.” — Bloomberg