Earlier this month, someone asked Microsoft employees In an internal forum asked whether ChatGPT is allowed for business use, as reported by CNBC.
Microsoft responded that they are allowed, as long as employees do not share confidential information with the AI tool, saying: “Please do not send sensitive data to any of the OpenAI softwarebecause they might use it to train future models.”
The world’s sudden obsession with ChatGPT has caused some tech companies to scramble to warn employees against interacting freely with the technology.
What is remarkable this time is that Microsoft is a major supporter and partner of OpenAI, as last week Microsoft announced a new round of financing for the startup.
The software giant also plans to integrate OpenAI technology into some of its other products, such as the Bing search engine and Office applications, The Information previously reported.
The close relationship between the two companies could create a potential conflict of interest for Microsoft, as it could benefit from OpenAI getting more training data, according to Vincent Konitzer, professor of computer science and director of the Artificial Intelligence Lab at Carnegie Mellon University.
The fear is that workers could inadvertently share confidential company information — such as internal software code — with a chatbot to ask for advice on how to improve their work.
ChatGPT can, in turn, process the data to train itself, and possibly share copies of confidential information it receives on future exchanges with other users.
