Samsung employees accidentally leaked company secrets via ChatGPT: Here’s what happened

Several tech companies including Samsung have allowed workers to take help from ChatGPT while performing tasks. However, this landed employees in hot water when they accidentally leaked confidential information to the AI chatbot.  

Samsung data leaked on ChatGPT

Samsung had allowed its engineers at the semiconductor division to use ChatGPT to help fix problems with source code. The employees mistakenly entered top-secret data like source code for a new program, and internal meeting notes relating to their hardware. In just a span of one month, three such incidents were reported.

Notably, ChatGPT retains the data it is fed to train itself further. Hence, these trade secrets from Samsung are now in the hands of the AI chatbot maker OpenAI.

To avoid making such mistakes in the future, Samsung Semiconductor is reportedly working on its own AI for the internal use of employees. However, it will be limited to processing prompts under 1024 bytes in size.

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In one of the accidents, an employee used the AI chatbot to optimize test sequences for identifying faults in chips that are confidential to companies. The employee copied the source code of a semiconductor database download program, entered it into ChatGPT, and inquired about errors. In another case, an employee used ChatGPT to convert internal meeting notes into a presentation. These notes carried sensitive information that is not supposed to be shared with third parties.

Notably, OpenAI’s ChatGPT FAQ clearly states, “Your conversations may be reviewed by our AI trainers to improve our systems."

As per a report by The Register, Samsung's chief has warned employees against making such mistakes. “If a similar accident occurs even after emergency information protection measures are taken, access to ChatGPT may be blocked on the company network," he has announced.

Notably, OpenAI claims, “We remove any personally identifiable information from data we intend to use to improve model performance. We also only use a small sampling of data per customer for our efforts to improve model performance."

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