Samsung
employees
have
allegedly
leaked
confidential
company
information
to
AI-powered
chatbot,
ChatGPT.
According
to
The
Economist
Korea,
three
separate
incidents
occurred
despite
the
company
originally
being
wary
of
adopting
ChatGPT.
Samsung
had
previously
expressed
concern
that
ChatGPT
may
leak
confidential
information,
issuing
a
warning
to
employees
to
“pay
attention
to
the
security
of
internal
information”
and
not
enter
private
information.
Each
incident
allegedly
involved
a
company
engineer
entering
confidential
information
into
ChatGPT
within
just
20
days.
Over
that
time,
one
engineer
allegedly
entered
Samsung’s
source
code
into
the
chatbot
when
looking
for
a
solution
to
a
bug;
another
recorded
a
company
meeting,
transcribed
it
using
an
audio-to-text
application
then
inputted
the
transcription
into
ChatGPT
to
create
meeting
notes;
and
a
third
used
ChatGPT
to
optimize
a
test
sequence
for
identifying
yield
and
defective
chips.
Disciplinary
investigations
have
been
launched
into
all
three.
As
ChatGPT
is
a
machine
learning
(ML)
platform,
all
data
inputted
is
used
to
train
its
algorithm,
meaning
that
this
proprietary
information
is
now
available
to
all
those
using
the
platform.
As
of
January
2023,
the
application
had
100
million
monthly
active
users.
ChatGPT
itself
does
warn
users
to
not
enter
sensitive
information
for
this
exact
reason.
Italy
bans
ChatGPT
over
data
privacy
concerns
In
April,
Italy
took
the
decision
to
temporarily
ban
ChatGPT
within
the
country
due
to
concerns
that
it
violates
the
General
Data
Protection
Regulation
(GDPR).
GDPR
is
a
law
concerning
data
and
data
privacy
which
imposes
security
and
privacy
obligations
on
those
operating
within
the
European
Union
(EU)
and
the
European
Economic
Area
(EEA).
The
Italian
data
protection
agency,
Garante
per
la
Protezione
dei
Dati
Personali
(also
known
as
Garante)
said
there
was
an
“absence
of
any
legal
basis
that
justifies
the
massive
collection
and
storage
of
personal
data”
to
“train”
ChatGPT,
in
addition
to
accusing
OpenAI
of
failing
to
verify
the
ages
of
ChatGPT
users.
Italy’s
ban
led
to
privacy
regulators
in
Ireland
and
France
contacting
Garante
to
find
out
more
regarding
its
decision
to
ban
ChatGPT.
A
spokesperson
for
Ireland’s
Data
Protection
Commissioner
told
Reuters:
“We
are
following
up
with
the
Italian
regulator.
We
will
coordinate
with
all
EU
data
protection
authorities
in
relation
to
this
matter.”
Not
all
Italian
authorities
are
in
favor
of
the
ban,
however,
with
the
country’s
transport
minister
and
leader
of
the
League
party,
Matteo
Salvini,
stating
in
an
Instagram
post
that
the
ban
is
“hypocritical”
and
“disproportionate”.
OpenAI
has
disabled
ChatGPT
in
Italy
as
per
the
agency’s
request,
but
noted
that
it
actively
works
to
prevent
the
use
of
private
data
in
the
training
of
its
ML
models.
The
company
also
said
that
it
would
be
working
with
Garante
to
“educat[e]
them
on
how
[its]
systems
are
built
and
used”.
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