The European Parliament has reportedly turned off AI features on lawmakers’ devices amid concerns about content going where it shouldn’t.
According to Politico, staff were notified that AI features on corporate devices (including tablets) were disabled because the IT department could not guarantee data security.
The bone of contention is that some AI assistants require the use of cloud services to perform tasks including email summarization, and so send the data off the device – a challenge for data protection.
It’s a unfortunate for device vendors that promote on-device processing, but the European Parliament’s tech support desk reportedly stated: “As these features continue to evolve and become available on more devices, the full extent of data shared with service providers is still being assessed. Until this is fully clarified, it is considered safer to keep such features disabled.”
The Register contacted the European Parliament for comment.
Data privacy and AI services have not been the greatest of bedfellows. Studies have shown that employees regularly leak company secrets via assistants, and on-device AI services are a focus of vendors amid concerns about exactly what is being sent to the cloud.
The thought of confidential data being sent to an unknown location in the cloud to generate a helpful summary has clearly worried lawmakers, which is why there is a blanket ban. However, the issue has less relevance if the process occurs on the device itself.
The Politico report noted that day-to-day tools, such as calendar applications, are not affected by the edict. The ban is temporary until the tech boffins can clarify what is being shared and where it is going.
The European Parliament has scrutinized AI over recent years and has enacted the world’s first legislation specifically designed to address perceived risks from the technology. The ban, alongside guidance to steer lawmakers away from using the services for Parliament business, is more about fears about where the data could end up than anything specific about AI.
The guidance also advised against granting third-party AI apps broad access to data, which seems a sensible instruction regardless of where a user works. ®