Samsung is the latest major company to voice concerns about generative AI. Credit: Babak Habibi on Unsplash.

Samsung Electronics has banned its employees from using generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools such as ChatGPT, reported Bloomberg.

The internal ban comes after the South Korea-based company found that staff uploaded sensitive code to the AI platform.

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In a memo seen by Bloomberg News, Samsung informed personnel at one of its largest divisions of the new policy.

According to the note, the firm is concerned that information uploaded to AI platforms such as Bing and Google Bard is retained on external servers, making it harder to recover and remove and perhaps exposing the information to other users.

Last month, the company surveyed employees on the internal usage of AI tools, and it found that 65% of them thought that doing so posed a security risk.

Recently, Samsung engineers accidentally uploaded internal source code to ChatGPT, the memo said.

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The news was confirmed by a Samsung spokesperson who said that a message prohibiting the usage of generative AI services was sent last week.

“Interest in generative AI platforms such as ChatGPT has been growing internally and externally,” the company said told employees.

“While this interest focuses on the usefulness and efficiency of these platforms, there are also growing concerns about security risks presented by generative AI.”

Samsung is the latest major company to voice concerns about this technology.

Earlier this year, some major US banks including JP Morgan, Citi and Bank of America either banned or limited the use of ChatGPT.

Samsung’s decision will impact the company-owned computers, tablets, and phones, as well as its internal networks.

The company has warned that non-compliance with the new policies could lead to termination of employment.

In addition, Samsung is developing its internal AI technologies for summarising and translating documents and for software development.

Furthermore, it is developing strategies to prevent the upload of private company data to third-party services.