US House bans employees from using Microsoft's Copilot chatbot

House Administration Chief Catherine Szpindor has issued general guidance to congressional offices, asking them not to use Microsoft's Copilot application. Copilot is an AI-based platform that can chat and answer questions in text (also known as a chatbot), similar to OpenAI's ChatGPT.

Hạ viện Mỹ cấm nhân viên sử dụng chatbot Copilot của Microsoft- Ảnh 1. — Microsoft Logo

"Microsoft's Copilot app has been deemed a risk to users by the Office of Cybersecurity due to the threat of exfiltration of House data to non-House-approved cloud services," Axios quoted the notice as saying, adding that the app will be removed and blocked on all House Windows devices.

Ms Szpindor's office said the guidance applied to the "commercial version" of the Copilot app but that it would also assess the government version once it was rolled out.

Microsoft has released free and paid versions of Copilot, along with several paid options for businesses. The paid versions can work directly within office applications like World, Excel, Outlook, and PowerPoint.

This is the latest regulatory move by the US federal government as it seeks to draft regulations for the popular technology. In June 2023, the US House of Representatives also restricted employees from using ChatGPT, limiting it to the paid version and banning the free version of the app.

In a statement, Microsoft acknowledged the heightened security demands of government users of data and said the company has announced a roadmap to align its tools with government guidance, addressing security concerns.

Apps like Copilot or ChatGPT use large amounts of data to “learn,” and there have been concerns about copyright and data privacy issues as these apps have emerged. According to Axios , many businesses are purchasing paid versions but on the condition that the data will not be used to train future AI models due to the risk of data leaks.

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