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What tech company accidentally leaked trade secrets through ChatGPT?

Answer: Samsung.

A person using ChatGPT on a laptop on the dark.
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It was only a matter of time before ChatGPT learned something it wasn’t supposed to. The AI chatbot keeps any information that is shared with it for training purposes.

Unfortunately, that includes confidential information, as Samsung just learned the hard way. Engineers in the company’s semiconductor division are (or perhaps were, now) allowed to use ChatGPT to check source code. But the company was recently made aware of three cases in which employees accidentally entered confidential information into the bot. Two of them entered confidential code into the chatbot, one to check for errors and one for “code optimization.” The third shared a meeting recording, so the bot could convert it to presentation notes.

Samsung has responded by limiting ChatGPT access to 1,024 bytes of upload per person and launching investigations into the responsible employees. It is also looking into developing an internal chatbot to use instead.