Apple restricts internal use of external AI tools such as ChatGPT and GitHub Copilot due to concerns about confidential data leakage

The Wall Street Journal reports that Apple has restricted the use of ChatGPT and other external AI tools for some employees to develop similar technology in-house.

Apple Restricts Employee Use of ChatGPT, Joining Other Companies Wary of Leaks - WSJ
https://www.wsj.com/articles/apple-restricts-use-of-chatgpt-joining-other-companies-wary-of-leaks-d44d7d34

Apple blocks employee use of ChatGPT internally
https://appleinsider.com/articles/23/05/18/apple-bans-internal-use-of-chatgpt-like-tech-over-fear-of-leaks-according-to-leaked-document

According to an internal document obtained by The Wall Street Journal, Apple is concerned that confidential data will be leaked by using external AI tools such as ChatGPT, GitHub Copilot, and Google Bard. ChatGPT and GitHub Copilot feed back the input data to the development side for model learning, so there is a possibility that confidential data may be leaked to the outside via ChatGPT or GitHub Copilot.

In fact, in April 2023, a Samsung engineer entered confidential source code into ChatGPT, and it was reported that Samsung called on employees to be careful.

A security incident occurred in which a Samsung engineer pastes confidential source code into ChatGPT - GIGAZINE

According to The Wall Street Journal, not only Apple but also other companies such as Amazon and Verizon are restricting the use of externally developed large language models and chatbot AI. In particular, Amazon has announced that it will partner with Hugging Face, a repository host service for AI, to build a next-generation large-scale language model, and has notified the company to use AI tools developed in-house rather than externally. About.

Amazon strengthens partnership with OpenAI's rival artificial intelligence startup Hugging Face, builds and provides next-generation LLM on AWS - GIGAZINE

The Wall Street Journal reports that Apple is also working on developing its own large-scale language model. We are restricting the use of external AI tools for

Since 2018, Apple has been developing AI under the leadership of former Google's John Jandrea, and has acquired many startups for artificial intelligence development. At the financial results briefing for the first quarter (January to March) of 2023, CEO Tim Cook said about AI development, ``I think it is very important to be cautious and thoughtful when working on something like this. There are many issues to sort out, but the possibilities of AI are very interesting, as has been said in various places.'

In addition, an OpenAI spokesperson has introduced a function that allows users to delete chat history, and has appealed that it is now possible to refuse to use the content entered in the past for AI model learning. You can see how you can actually set learning refusal with ChatGPT by reading the following article.

How to set learning refusal to prevent leakage of confidential information with ChatGPT & How to download conversation history Summary - GIGAZINE