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Amazon warns employees from sharing confidential information with ChatGPT

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Amazon has warned employees not to divulge sensitive information over the AI internet sensation ChatGPT after its launch last November.

The warning comes after an internal Slack channel at the company was swamped with employee queries regarding the chatbot.

Some wanted to know if Amazon has official guidelines for using ChatGPT on work devices.

Others asked if they could even use the AI tool for work.

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One staff member urged Amazon Web Services to state its view on "acceptable usage of generative AI tools," like ChatGPT.

A corporate lawyer at the company warned staffers from sharing confidential data as there were"instances" of ChatGPT responses resembling internal Amazon data.

The attorney told employees to follow the firm’s existing conflict of interest and confidentiality policies.

This reflects one of the many new ethical issues that have arisen due to ChatGPT’s unexpected debut.

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Amazon has implemented certain internal safeguards for ChatGPT.

Insider reported when employees use a work device to visit the ChatGPT website, a warning pops up.

It says they're about to access a third-party service that "may not be approved for use by Amazon Security.”

But employees in the Slack channel said they could skip that message by clicking on the "Acknowledge" tab. 

Despite the warnings, several Amazonians showed interest to join internal teams working on similar services.

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They said utilizing the chatbot at work has led to "10x in productivity." 

Some are already using the tool as a software "coding assistant" by asking it to enhance internal lines of code.

Experts say OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, is not transparent about how it handles confidential corporate information.

Within a week of its inception, ChatGPT has crossed 1 million users, prompting Microsoft to invest heavily in OpenAI.

The AI tool is said to have the potential to upend a number of industries, with speculations that it can be a threat to Google’s core advertising business. 

Source: Insider

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