On the surface, ChatGPT may seem like a tool that can be useful for an array of work tasks. But before you ask the chatbot to summarize important memos or check your work for errors, it’s worth remembering that everything you share with ChatGPT is used to train the system. Might go and maybe even pop up in other users’ answers. Several Samsung employees should have known about it before allegedly sharing confidential information with the chatbot.
Shortly after Samsung’s semiconductor division allowed engineers to use ChatGPT, employees leaked secret information on at least three occasions. The Economist Korea (as seen Mashable, One employee reportedly asked the chatbot to check sensitive database source code for errors, another requested code optimization and a third fed the recorded meeting to ChatGPT and asked it to generate minutes.
Reports suggest that, after learning of the security lapse, Samsung attempted to limit the extent of future lapses by limiting the length of employees’ ChatGPT to one kilobyte, or 1024 characters of text. The company is said to be investigating three employees and is building its own chatbot to prevent similar mishaps. Engadget has contacted Samsung for comment.
ChatGPT’s data policy states that unless users explicitly opt out, it uses their signals to train its models. The chatbot’s owner, OpenAI, urged users not to share secret information with ChatGPT in conversations because it “isn’t able to remove specific prompts from your history.” The only way to get rid of personally identifying information on ChatGPT is to delete your account – a process that can take up to four weeks.
The Samsung saga is another example of why it’s worth exercising caution when using chatbots, as you probably should with all of your online activities. You never really know where your data will end up.
