According to foreign media reports,MicrosoftAt one point, its employees were temporarily banned from usingChatGPT, justified by concerns about security and data issues.
While several tech companies have banned or at least discouraged internal use of ChatGPT in the past, Microsoft's decision has raised eyebrows, especially considering that Microsoft is an OpenAImaximumand one of the most notable investors.
Source Note: The image is generated by AI, and the image is authorized by Midjourney
In January, Microsoft announced plans to invest $10 billion in ChatGPT's developers over the next few years, having already injected $3 billion into OpenAI. Microsoft also uses OpenAI's large-scale language models in the AI-based tools it rolls out in its products, such as Bing's chatbots.
However, in an internal notice, Microsoft said, "While it is true that Microsoft has invested in OpenAI and that ChatGPT has built-in protections against inappropriate use, the site is still a third-party external service." Microsoft advises employees to "use caution," noting that the same applies to other external services, including AI image generator Midjourney.
Microsoft's surprising disabling of ChatGPT came after it quickly restored access to the chatbot following its news release about it, according to CNBC. Microsoft also allegedly removed the portion of its notice that referred to disabling the chat app and design software Canva.
A company spokesperson told the news organization that the block was a mistake, even though the notification explicitly mentioned ChatGPT and Microsoft restored access to it as soon as it realized the mistake. The spokesperson said, "We were testing endpoint control systems for large language models and accidentally turned them on across all employees."
They added: "As we have previously stated, we encourage our employees and customers to use services such as Bing Chat Enterprise and ChatGPT Enterprise with higher levels of privacy and security protection."