Samsung Electronics Co. is temporarily banning the use of generative AI services at the workplace after some employees uploaded company information on ChatGPT in April, according to a Bloomberg report dated May 2, 2023. The South Korean electronics company has stated that they are reviewing the security measures and also working on ways to “block the upload of sensitive company information to external services”. Bloomberg reviewed the memo, which notified the staff about the ban on the use of generative AI systems on company-owned computers, tablets, phones and internal networks. The report adds that the move will not affect devices sold to consumers. Employees, who use ChatGPT or other tools on their personal devices are strictly warned not to share any company-related information or data that could reveal its “intellectual property”. An accidental leak: In early April, Samsung engineers at the company’s semiconductor arm inputted confidential source code data and internal meeting notes into ChatGPT while using the AI tool for assistance with code-writing. Within a month, the company recorded three instances when employees leaked such information via ChatGPT, which “retains user input-data to train itself”. The company has been apprehensive about sensitive data being transmitted to external servers via AI platforms or search engines including Google’s Bard, Microsoft’s Bing and even OpenAI, thus, making it difficult to retrieve or delete such information. In response, Bloomberg reported that Samsung is also creating its own AI tool for assisting company operations and for software development. In January this year, Amazon also…
