Samsung employees leaked confidential company data including source code, meeting notes, and chip testing procedures by inputting this sensitive information into ChatGPT while using it to help with work tasks.
Samsung Semiconductor employees used ChatGPT to assist with various work tasks, but inadvertently leaked confidential company data in the process. Over the course of just under a month, there were three recorded incidents of employees sharing sensitive information with the AI system. In one case, an employee asked ChatGPT to optimize test sequences for identifying faults in chips, which contained confidential information. In another incident, an employee used ChatGPT to convert meeting notes into a presentation format. A third case involved an employee inputting source code for a new program to help fix problems. Since ChatGPT retains user input data to further train itself, this confidential information including trade secrets is now stored on OpenAI's servers and cannot be retrieved or deleted. Samsung Electronics subsequently warned workers about the dangers of leaking confidential information and noted that the data is impossible to retrieve. The company is now developing its own in-house AI for internal employee use, with prompts limited to 1024 bytes in size. In the highly competitive semiconductor industry, such data leaks could spell disaster for the company.
Domain classification, causal taxonomy, severity scores, and national security assessments were LLM-classified and may contain errors.
AI systems that memorize and leak sensitive personal data or infer private information about individuals without their consent. Unexpected or unauthorized sharing of data and information can compromise user expectation of privacy, assist identity theft, or cause loss of confidential intellectual property.
Human
Due to a decision or action made by humans
Unintentional
Due to an unexpected outcome from pursuing a goal
Post-deployment
Occurring after the AI model has been trained and deployed
No population impact data reported.