Samsung to Fire Employees Caught Using ChatGPT

Samsung is the latest organization to ban its staff from using ChatGPT to prevent company data from being leaked.

The Korean electronics giant sent a memo to its staff saying it was concerned about “security risks presented by generative AI,” according to Bloomberg. The company found out that some engineers accidentally leaked internal source code by uploading it to ChatGPT.

The memo said workers can no longer access ChatGPT, Google Bard and Bing chat on company-owned computers and devices as well as internal networks. The ban is only for staff, meaning Samsung devices sold to consumers can still access generative AI applications.

The memo contends that once uploaded, data entered into such third-party applications would be stored on external servers and become difficult to retrieve and delete and ultimately could be disclosed to other users. Staff who break the rules could be fired, the memo warned.

ChatGPT recently added an 'incognito' mode that lets users exclude their chats from being used in AI model training. And Last month, Open AI said it was working on a business version of ChatGPT in which users would have greater control of their data.

In the meantime, companies including JPMorgan Chase, Amazon, Verizon and Accenture have barred staff from using it for work. They share Samsung’s concerns that using such applications could compromise the security of sensitive company data.

Despite some big-name companies not wanting staff to use ChatGPT, over 90% of business leaders surveyed are hiring employees with ChatGPT experience, according to a Resume Builder report.