Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella speaks at the OpenAI DevDay event on November 06, 2023 in San Francisco, California. Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, delivered the keynote address at the first Open AI DevDay conference.
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Microsoft has invested billions of dollars in OpenAI. But for a brief period on Thursday, CNBC reported, the software company’s employees were not allowed to use the startup’s most famous product, ChatGPT.
Due to security and data concerns, a number of AI tools are no longer available for employee use, Microsoft said in an update on an internal website. CNBC also saw a screenshot showing that ChatGPT is not accessible on corporate devices.
Representatives for Microsoft and OpenAI did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
“While it is true that Microsoft has invested in OpenAI, and ChatGPT has built-in safeguards to prevent misuse, the website is an external third-party service,” Microsoft said. “This means you should be careful using it due to privacy and security risks. The same goes for other external AI services like Midjourney or Replika.”
The company initially said it would ban ChatGPT and design software Canva, but later removed a line in the advisory that included those products. After this story was originally published, Microsoft restored access to ChatGPT.
In a statement to CNBC, Microsoft told CNBC that the temporary blocking of ChatGPT was an error caused by testing systems for large language models.
A spokesperson said: “We were testing endpoint control systems for LLMs and inadvertently turned them on for all employees.” “We restored service shortly after we discovered our error. As we’ve said before, we encourage employees and customers to use services like Bing Chat Enterprise and ChatGPT Enterprise, which have higher levels of privacy and protections. It comes with security.”
Many large companies have restricted the use of ChatGPT, often to prevent the sharing of confidential data. ChatGPT generates human-like responses to people’s chat messages after training on vast Internet data. This service has more than 100 million users.
Microsoft’s update advises people to use the company’s own Bing Chat tool, which relies on OpenAI artificial intelligence models. These two companies are closely related. Microsoft has also this year been rolling out updates to its Windows operating system and Office applications that take advantage of OpenAI services, which in turn run on Microsoft’s Azure cloud infrastructure.
Earlier this week, CEO Satya Nadella appeared on stage alongside OpenAI’s Sam Altman at the startup’s first developer conference.
Altman wrote in A Post Late Thursday at X that “rumors that we are retaliating against Microsoft 365 are completely unfounded.”
In January, a senior Microsoft engineer wrote on a forum that employees could use ChatGPT, but advised against entering confidential information, Insider reported.
Earlier this week, a hacker group called Sudan Anonymous said it targeted ChatGPT because of OpenAI’s “collaboration with the Israeli occupation government” and because Altman said he “wants to invest more in Israel.”
to watch: OpenAI on pace to generate $1.3 billion in revenue by 2023, up 4,543% from last year
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