The European Parliame announced in an email to lawmakers and staff on Monday that it has disabled default artificial ielligence capabilities on corporate devices due to concerns about cybersecurity and data protection vulnerabilities.
According to Politico, this email states that some of these AI assistas use cloud services to do things that the device itself can easily do. Employees have also been advised that as these features evolve and become available on more devices, the exact amou of data shared with service providers is still under review. The European Parliame has said that uil this issue is fully clarified, it is better that such capabilities remain inactive.
EU lawmakers ban AI on devices for security reasons
Lawmakers are also advised to take similar precautions on their personal devices, especially if they use them for work. The email cautions people not to allow work documes or private communications to be scanned by AI capabilities, and to exercise caution when installing third-party AI applications and graing access to data.
In a stateme to Politico, the European Union Parliame told Politico that the press service of the European Union coinuously monitors cyber security threats and implemes the necessary measures quickly to preve them. However, Politico noted that Parliame declined to provide a detailed explanation of which artificial ielligence was disabled or what operating systems the working devices used, citing the sensitive nature of the information.
Blocking artificial ielligence tools, especially in governme devices and systems, is not a new issue. For example, DeepSick was banned last year in several couries, including Taiwan, the United States, and Australia, due to national security concerns on governme hardware.
Last summer, it was also revealed that the acting director of the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) had uploaded sensitive documes to the public version of ChatGPT.
