Microsoft has temporarily restricted its employees‘ access to ChatGPT, according to CNBC, even though the software company has invested billions of dollars in OpenAI.
The software giant briefly blocked access to the chatbot on Thursday after warning employees that it posed privacy and security concerns, though it later reversed the move.
“A number of AI tools are no longer available for employees to use due to security and data concerns,” Microsoft said in an internal update.
CNBC also saw a screenshot that showed that ChatGPT could not be accessed via the company’s devices.
“The website remains an external, non-Microsoft service, although we have invested in OpenAI, and ChatGPT has internal safeguards to prevent improper use,” Microsoft said.
added: “This means that caution must be taken when using it due to privacy and security risks. This applies to any other third-party AI services, such as Midjourney or Replika.”
The company initially stated that it was blocking ChatGPT and Canva, though it later removed a line in an internal update that included those products.
“The temporary ban on the ChatGPT product was an error resulting from systems testing of large language models,” Microsoft said in a statement. We were testing endpoint control systems for large language models and inadvertently turned them on for all employees. “We restored service shortly after the error was identified.”
Microsoft explained that it encourages employees and customers to use services, such as Bing Chat Enterprise and ChatGPT Enterprise, that are equipped with high levels of privacy and security protection.
Many major companies have restricted the use of ChatGPT due to concerns that its use could lead to confidential data leakage.
Trained on Internet data, ChatGPT composes human-like responses in response to text prompts, and the service has more than 100 million users.
Microsoft’s update recommends people use Bing Chat, a tool based on OpenAI’s AI models, as the two companies are closely linked.
This year, Microsoft rolled out updates to its Windows operating system and Office applications that take advantage of OpenAI services, which use Microsoft’s Azure cloud infrastructure.
Earlier this month, Satya Nadella appeared alongside Sam Altman at the startup OpenAI’s first developer conference. “The rumors that we are banning Microsoft 365 in retaliation are baseless,” Altman wrote in a post via X.
